Is that why you leftist socialists want to legalize "gay" marriage?
No, that's the homosexual movement. You really have a problem differentiating the different groups that you see as "left" don't you?
I guess that's why you leftist socialist democrats want all the cheap mexican labor here,
Uh, no, that's your boy "W" and the democrats. I'm in the American First party because I want closed borders- no trade with other countries at all. You really are an idiot aren't you? Don't even know who your enemies are.
I know enough to do better financially in the IT business than 99.98% of all the other people who post here, of which obviously you are one.
Likely by being a traitor and offshoring, or using H-1b slaves.
If you mean by "civilization" a place where other people are going to (or be forced to) sacrifice their standard of living to compensate for someone else's shortcomings or misfortunes, then you're right.
Since the intent of living in a city, or being civilized, is to band together to compensate for individual shortcomings and misfortunes, correct. Now here's the $1,000,000 question: Why the hell should I buy from you if the only thing you're for is yourself?
Well, if you worked for either of my companies, I would have fired your ass long ago since you are a whiny bitch. You're lucky to have only gotten "raises".
What are these raises of which you speak? IT work doesn't have raises. I only got a different salary when I switched jobs. I said I was well paid for what I did- in that I considered myself lucky to be working in my hobby, and I was being paid enough to not have to worry about living and managing finances on top of that. I get kept around until the bankruptcy court because I actually am loyal and work hard to keep the axe away- and it took me 4 jobs before I realized that loyalty is repaid only with betrayal.
As far as I'm concerned, America should be considered a corporation- and we need to start laying off the deadweight that has been failing us.
So another words, you're bitter because you played "hide-the-sausage" and a third party (or so you claim) caused you to lose. I guess you should have opted for natural birth, eh? Did someone force you to go to the hospital at gunpoint? I didn't think so.
No, we didn't "opt for the natural birth", we had the baby induced a week early due to preclampsia, then when the baby wouldn't come out, after 7 hours in the birth canal they finally found us a surgeon, and we had a C-section. If we hadn't have gone to the hospital, the preclampsia would have killed my wife, so yes, it was the hospital or death, same as with a gun.
You really are an idiot aren't you?
If I were a stupid socialist, I might think that way. The reason that businesses exist is so that they can generate jobs for the sorry-assed losers like you who "need" them. Has been for about 5000 years.
I see you failed basic macroeconomics as well. Businesses in the modern form have only existed since the Corporation Act of 1845. By that law, they exist for one reason only- to make profit. NOT create jobs- unless creating jobs is a part of that profit. In fact, if a business provides jobs without making profit, it's called embezzlement, and the C-level executives can and will be prosecuted and sent to jail. So you really are an idiot, aren't you?
You better start saving up a buffer so you do have flexibility to leave when the job place gets rough or your boss tries to ship your job to india.
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. The only reason I'm still in the house was because I had 2 years worth of savings + a 401k; they're all gone now. After 2 years of working, I'm back up to about 3-4 months of savings, plus of course the less than my house payment "unemployment insurance".
Honestly, I think the best way to behave in a situation where the work gets unbarable is to quit and:
Best way for you maybe. Here's why each of these didn't work for me.
1) try to find a new job.
My three year layoff was 2001-2004. 500-3000 applicants for ANY job. I was putting out 100 resumes a month, working 16 hour days unemployed.
2) find a market/product and try to sell it. Let the marketplace decide. The barriers to entry are SO fucking low nowadays that it doesn't make sense to suffer in a crappy job. You can make 10x as much by using a bit of the creativity that is normally devoted to programming used for marketing and selling instead. And you'll have that flexibility to decide how much and how little to work.
At which point somebody who has more money and political power than you comes by and gives you an offer you can't refuse. I took the offer- it was good for another 2 months of unemployment. Not taking the offer is good for a few months in the hospital. Where there are no financial barriers to entry, powerful men will create illegal barriers to entry, that's the way of the "marketplace".
3) threaten your boss that your going to quit unless x, y, z happen. Watch him fold.
That's how I got laid off to begin with- though I only had an x (just buy a 'freakin upgrade to InstallShield! You insisted I use ADO, and we need the upgrade to ship the already finished product! Yes, I know it's $700, but we need the tools to do our job! What's that? To find the $700 you need to reduce headcount?).
Unions for creative jobs don't make sense because you're tieing your fortunes to those of the group.
If I'm a creative part of a team developing a quarter million lines of code, my fortunes are already tied to those of the group. Freelancers should stay freelancers- and stay the hell away from union shops. AND stay the hell away from my team- I like having the creativity, but if you can't work within the constructs of my coding standards, you're going to create more bugs than you fix.
Everyone has to work together against the common enemy (the corperate leaders).
That's because, as a rule, management's cluelessness about tech is the biggest threat to any large software project. They'll insist you do stupid things like create "prototypes" before gathering user requirements- only to also then insist that you ship the prototype as a finished product "until the next release is ready". The corporate leaders ARE the common enemy of all software design.
In the computer engineering field, this seems like bs to me. Individual engineers have a high degree of power over whether a project successes or fails.
You've apparently never had to deal with an unreasonable management. And, it's how Individual Engineers work together on the TEAM that dicates success or failure- a good team leader will tune individual assignments to skills and creativity levels, but if you have a rogue who is too creative for his own good, it won't matter how good his skills are.
In unionized jobs, the individual workers have little or no control of the process
I've yet to see ANY software lifecycle where the engineers have more control over the process than the end users.
Unless your kid appeared out of thin air, the moron is the one who stuck his hard-on in a hole and got the process rolling. I realize that you're a stupid socialist whiner, but I'm betting with some coaching in biology even you could figure out who THAT is. I realize that socialists don't like to hear this, but you have no right under the U.S. Constitution to play "hide-the-sausage" and have society protect you from the outcomes when you lose at that game.
Now you're really the idiot- you don't even know the basic cause of Cerebral Palsy is Hospital Error. (hint: there's only ONE way to get brain damaged during birth).
And apparently you libertarians have forgotten the entire reason civil marriage is endorsed by the state to begin with: to create the next generation of workers. Has been for about 5000 years now.
I'm through with you- you obviously don't know the first thing about living in civilization. If you don't want to pay taxes, here's a hint: they can't tax what they can't find. Go live as a hermit.
I can't wait to see somebody sell a "vintage" copy of Office 6.0- on all 25 floppies.....and Win95 when it first came out was also on floppy, took 15 of them.
Lukily it's not all MY code....and most certainly a good deal of it does. This has got to be the most complex project I've ever worked on, and it doesn't help one whit that while the project is designed to follow good software development life cycle standards (with all of the extra documentation that implies), quite often the coding is being done before the analysis of user requirements is complete in practice, thus createing a horrific hodge-podge of patches on top of patches on top of patches.....
Changing jobs when it suits you is not avoiding responsibility, it's called managing your career. If you've got the skills then your financial obligations shouldn't prevent you from "right-sizing" your employer at your convenience... unless of course you're a socialist moron who expects to have his livelihood handed to him without putting out any effort. If that's the case then you should have been more conservative with your finances. Either way you are not deserving of any sympathy.
When you have a kid with CP, or any other illness that can't be insured because it's "preexisting", and your insurance is tied to your employer, let me know. Until then, you're the moron. No amount of skills will change the system in the United States that makes employment more indentured servitude than employment.
If your skillset can be exported to India for $2.50/hr, then that's probably where you ought to move if you're not willing (or able) to stay ahead of the curve and put yourself in a position to command more for your skills (or find some skills that CAN'T be exported for $2.50/hr).
I can't afford the $3 million India charges for a guest worker visa- so I'm trapped.
And when you lose that war, do we get to kill you, or will we have to settle for enslaving you?
We all lose that war- merely being forced to fight it because the future is no worse than if you didn't insures that in the end, all will be dead.
Here's the beauty of economics. If the Chinese and the Indians truly do have a comparative advantage at creating software then that means that everyone that uses software will benefit as more software production is moved overseas.
David Ricardo was a liar- it hasn't worked that way for 30 years.
Sure, you'll have to find something else to do, but everyone that buys software will benefit. No one is going to go to war to preserve your job because chances are good that they will actually benefit from the shift.
The problem is, chances are NOT good that they will actually benefit from the shift- it hasn't worked that way for 30 years, and because of sticking to the lie instead of admiting the truth, Americans now spend 108% of what they earn just to stay in one place.
Hooray for economics!
Economics is as much of a lie as the idea that Lenin was a Marxist (he wasn't- he was a con artist using the promises of Marxism to turn the state into a corporation).
You can try and fight economics if you want, but its not likely to help. Free markets are as old as mankind, and even in places like the former Soviet Union, where the government tried to limit the power of the market, markets still had a very powerful influence on the economy.
That's funny. The Soviet Union didn't try to limit the power of the market, they merely allowed the State to corner the market's power.
So declare war on India and China if you wish, just don't be surprised when your army turns out to be pathetically small, and full of deranged lunatics.
On deranged lunatic is more trustworthy than all the economists and corporatists in the world right now.
Actually, this was the class that convinced me the opposite- that people should be honest in business rather than redefining words to suit their own purposes. What part of this class led you to believe that C-level executives do not mean what they say?
Um. Employment verification is done to make sure that you're not obtaining hundreds of thousands of dollars fraudulently with no hope of repaying it. The bank has lots of little actuaries and statisticians crunching numbers, and they've found that -- based on a statistical analysis of past default / repayment data -- "MOST" people who have had a job for the last X years are "creditworthy" customers, who will, in all probability, be able to continue making the loan payments that they're signing on to make. The bank is not in the business of losing money, it's in the business of making money... so is this an unreasonable thing for them to ask? The employer simply says, "Yeah, he's worked here for the past 2 years." They're not making any guarantee that you'll continue working there for the next 48.
It is NOT an unreasonable thing to ask. It's a pretty bad set of statistics to base stuff on though- we didn't have "free trade" before Clinton.
No, the answer is that having been able to hold the same job for 2 years (not exactly that long a time to have held a job, really) makes you, statistically, quite likely to be able to continue making payments to the bank, and therefore you are a good investment, rather than a bad risk. Unemployment is an explanation for being unable to make a payment, but you're right -- it's no excuse. If you don't have sufficient cash reserves to weather a downturn in the market, and a couple months of unemployment, then you shouldn't buy a house. The bank isn't in business to lose money, as I may have already mentioned.
Agreed. Too bad they're acting like they are- after all, until I experienced it myself, I never expected to be unemployed for 6 months, let alone 26 or 36. Their statistics are simply wrong in today's job market- a very bad assumption on their part.
Depends on what you're calling the "American Dream," doesn't it? If the American Dream consists of a modestly sized house in a decent neighborhood, then it's quite possible to achieve that -- people do it every day on far less than the average IT worker makes. If the American dream consists of a 3000 sq ft loft on the upper west side, with a parking space for your ferrari and a helipad where your helicopter can pick you up to take you to your weekend home in the Hamptons, then no, most people won't achieve that.
Boy, you sure are out of touch with the housing market. I'll give you a bit of a hint- I live in an area of Oregon that supposedly is half as expensive as LA or New York. My last refinance had the value of my modest little 1200SQ ft 3br 2ba at a QUARTER OF A MILLION. That's right- $250,000 for a 1200 SQ ft house on a.25 acre lot. That would be a financial stretch for just about anybody.
Yes, they can and do afford the current housing market, in LOTS of areas of the country. One of my friends & his wife, with a combined household income of about 55 - 60k/year, just bought a decent house about an hour outside of Boston, and they're quite comfortable and happy with it. Could they afford a place IN boston, or much closer to Boston? No, probably not. But it's *always* been expensive to live in/near the city. I don't know where you live, but I see young people successfully purchasing houses all the time around where I live.
They're "successfully purchasing" them because of interest-only loans and tricks like that 50 year mortgage. If those tricks (which you and I agreed were finanically irresponsible back just three messages) were not available, if only people that the banks could be 100% certain would be able to pay back the mortgage could get loans, there's no way somebody in your friend's or my income level would ever be able to afford a house. And if housing prices keep outstripping income increases by 4% every year (as they have since I bought my house in 1999) then no, not even those tricks will work for long.
Um. Where in their marketing literature do you see that one of the terms or conditions of the loan is that you hold the same job for 50 years?
In the paper you AND your employer sign verifying your employment before they give you the loan. Maybe not a term exactly- but certainly an implied expectation that you will HAVE a job to repay the loan, and they make your employer co-sign it.
I don't think it's unreasonable for a mortgage to demand that you to be able to make your payments for 50 years, if that's the term of the loan
Neither do I. I just feel like a liar signing the paper- when I don't know if I'll be able to make the payments in 6 months, let alone 15, 20, 30, or 50 years. I've got cash reserves at this point (2 years after ending my long unemployment) of maybe 3 months.
... but I don't think they're saying they expect you to stay at the same job, or with the same company for 50 years. How you make your payments is your concern, and as long as the bank gets their money on the 15th of the month, I don't think they really care who's paying you.
Agreed- so why verify employment to begin with? Why require two years employment with the same company before you even get the loan? The answer is because they expect you to keep making those payments on the 15th of the month- unemployment is no excuse.
And let's be honest: if you take out a 50-year mortgage, you're probably stretching yourself beyond your means in order to afford a house you can't really afford given your current income level, and future income expectations. I've seen a couple friends get into trouble with some of the new-fangled ARMs and other niche mortgage products, and at the end of the day, what they're doing is stretching themselves to the limit with NO safety net in order to afford "more house". And that's not wise & responsible fiscal planning.
Let's be honest- with the 50% inflation in housing cost over the last 5 years, no American can afford the American Dream under "wise & responsible fiscal planning" anymore. The housing bubble is just that- a speculative bubble. It will burst eventually- and millions will be left homeless as banks foreclose on property that isn't worth 1/10th what they lent on it. NOBODY can afford the current housing market unless we all want to live in 8x10 shacks (and in many areas of the country, not even then!)
1. The Kwakiutal Nation extended all the way down to California, and consisted of hundreds of tribes.
2. In 1835, the Kalapuya tribe of the Kwakiutal nation was infected with Malaria, killing off 95% of the population of the Willamette Valley (and, incidentally, giving the Willamette it's name).
3. The remaining tribe members intermarried with white settlers- many of their descendants today appear white.
4. I know this because I listened to the tribal elders when I was young- TV is for whimps.
I gave up in 2002. I no longer trust what ANYBODY in the industry has to say about job availability- it's all just a lie in an attempt to get more H-1b visas and to attempt to convince more American schoolchildren to become slaves to a career that isn't respected or valued.
The funny thing is 9/11 was my freshman year, and Iraq started my junior year. After Iraq, about a quarter of the student body engaged in a long-term civil disobedience campaign in which we would remain sitting during the pledge, or on particularly bad days we would stand with our backs to it.
The administration didn't like that much, but it's not as if they are going to call up the Texas National Guard to force us to pledge.
Given the time period you gave, it's not like they could if they wanted to- the Texas National Guard was serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was a half-a-world-away.
Well, there is one more step there- after the three years of unemployment, I took a consultant position in a union-only shop, because the only way you get a union job is to already BE a known quantity in a union-only shop...and take EVERY opportunity to grow your skills.
But have you ever noticed that the so-called "American Dream" is based on stability (the newest home loans expect you to be in the same job for 50 years!), but American Jobs aren't? That is what was confusing me- and that's why I need something more than just seeing opportunity to stay employed. You can see all the opportunity you want- but in the end it's just illusion, just smoke and mirrors, and there is no such thing as community, country, nation, or loyalty left.
I hope we can all see the difference between these two statements. I got dizzy trying to explain the disconnect in reasoning.
What you fail to see is that the only difference between communism and capitalism is who gets rich- a few con-artist families or a con-artist political party. BOTH are lying to you- opportunity is a scam, hope is worthless.
If your project was destined for commercial success, and your company could have made a reasonable profit with it on the market, they wouldn't have pulled the plug on it.
Profit is as profit does- they were looking at the short term rather than the long term.
either you just couldn't see it because you were so invested in the work that you were blinded to the simple fact that it was a solution in search of a problem?
Except for it was working in the beta test site- and in fact had increased profitability by 30% just by catching some wierd accounting that was going on.
or, your team was a bunch of arrogant prima donnas who figured you were going to rock the world, and ended up producing a crappy product that nobody would take for free, much less pay for?
Actually there's a third option you missed- a lesson I didn't learn until years later. By the stock market Any project that is not marketable within 4 months is a failure.
Alternately, perhaps it is the case that The PHBs really were complete effing morons; In that case, they ran the company into the ground, and that's a hell of a shame, but if the project truly was a potential blockbuster, why not simply contact the developers who worked on it with you, start your own company, and bring the product to market?
Because the bankruptcy court confiscated the sourcecode.
But yeah, I guess choosing 3 years of unemployment spent trying to find a unionized IT job is an equally reasonable response to handling the "money-sucking" responsibilities and the duty to your DNA that you seem to love talking about.
I think you're taking 2 different story lines and conflating them- you see, the PHB story came from my first employment, after which I was employed again after 2 weeks. The second job lasted a year and a half, and I was employed again *before* being laid off. The third job lasted 6 months and WAS a crappy project. The fourth lasted two and a half years- and that's when the 3 years of unemployment struck. By the fourth one- I was *seriously* invested in several money-sucking responsibilities, and while my savings lasted and we're still in the house- everything is gone. 401k, savings, past judgements for wages unpaid, everything. THAT is why I'm giving up.
True- but novels= complexity in people's minds, and they're always measured in numbers of words. Note- I only put forth my quarter-million lines of code project as an example- the real comparison is space taken up by the source code of both the novel and the project. 25 MB is 250x 100kbytes....
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Is that why you leftist socialists want to legalize "gay" marriage?
No, that's the homosexual movement. You really have a problem differentiating the different groups that you see as "left" don't you?
I guess that's why you leftist socialist democrats want all the cheap mexican labor here,
Uh, no, that's your boy "W" and the democrats. I'm in the American First party because I want closed borders- no trade with other countries at all. You really are an idiot aren't you? Don't even know who your enemies are.
I know enough to do better financially in the IT business than 99.98% of all the other people who post here, of which obviously you are one.
Likely by being a traitor and offshoring, or using H-1b slaves.
If you mean by "civilization" a place where other people are going to (or be forced to) sacrifice their standard of living to compensate for someone else's shortcomings or misfortunes, then you're right.
Since the intent of living in a city, or being civilized, is to band together to compensate for individual shortcomings and misfortunes, correct. Now here's the $1,000,000 question: Why the hell should I buy from you if the only thing you're for is yourself?
Well, if you worked for either of my companies, I would have fired your ass long ago since you are a whiny bitch. You're lucky to have only gotten "raises".
What are these raises of which you speak? IT work doesn't have raises. I only got a different salary when I switched jobs. I said I was well paid for what I did- in that I considered myself lucky to be working in my hobby, and I was being paid enough to not have to worry about living and managing finances on top of that. I get kept around until the bankruptcy court because I actually am loyal and work hard to keep the axe away- and it took me 4 jobs before I realized that loyalty is repaid only with betrayal.
As far as I'm concerned, America should be considered a corporation- and we need to start laying off the deadweight that has been failing us.
So another words, you're bitter because you played "hide-the-sausage" and a third party (or so you claim) caused you to lose. I guess you should have opted for natural birth, eh? Did someone force you to go to the hospital at gunpoint? I didn't think so.
No, we didn't "opt for the natural birth", we had the baby induced a week early due to preclampsia, then when the baby wouldn't come out, after 7 hours in the birth canal they finally found us a surgeon, and we had a C-section. If we hadn't have gone to the hospital, the preclampsia would have killed my wife, so yes, it was the hospital or death, same as with a gun.
You really are an idiot aren't you?
If I were a stupid socialist, I might think that way. The reason that businesses exist is so that they can generate jobs for the sorry-assed losers like you who "need" them. Has been for about 5000 years.
I see you failed basic macroeconomics as well. Businesses in the modern form have only existed since the Corporation Act of 1845. By that law, they exist for one reason only- to make profit. NOT create jobs- unless creating jobs is a part of that profit. In fact, if a business provides jobs without making profit, it's called embezzlement, and the C-level executives can and will be prosecuted and sent to jail. So you really are an idiot, aren't you?
You better start saving up a buffer so you do have flexibility to leave when the job place gets rough or your boss tries to ship your job to india.
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. The only reason I'm still in the house was because I had 2 years worth of savings + a 401k; they're all gone now. After 2 years of working, I'm back up to about 3-4 months of savings, plus of course the less than my house payment "unemployment insurance".
Honestly, I think the best way to behave in a situation where the work gets unbarable is to quit and:
Best way for you maybe. Here's why each of these didn't work for me.
1) try to find a new job.
My three year layoff was 2001-2004. 500-3000 applicants for ANY job. I was putting out 100 resumes a month, working 16 hour days unemployed.
2) find a market/product and try to sell it. Let the marketplace decide. The barriers to entry are SO fucking low nowadays that it doesn't make sense to suffer in a crappy job. You can make 10x as much by using a bit of the creativity that is normally devoted to programming used for marketing and selling instead. And you'll have that flexibility to decide how much and how little to work.
At which point somebody who has more money and political power than you comes by and gives you an offer you can't refuse. I took the offer- it was good for another 2 months of unemployment. Not taking the offer is good for a few months in the hospital. Where there are no financial barriers to entry, powerful men will create illegal barriers to entry, that's the way of the "marketplace".
3) threaten your boss that your going to quit unless x, y, z happen. Watch him fold.
That's how I got laid off to begin with- though I only had an x (just buy a 'freakin upgrade to InstallShield! You insisted I use ADO, and we need the upgrade to ship the already finished product! Yes, I know it's $700, but we need the tools to do our job! What's that? To find the $700 you need to reduce headcount?).
Unions for creative jobs don't make sense because you're tieing your fortunes to those of the group.
If I'm a creative part of a team developing a quarter million lines of code, my fortunes are already tied to those of the group. Freelancers should stay freelancers- and stay the hell away from union shops. AND stay the hell away from my team- I like having the creativity, but if you can't work within the constructs of my coding standards, you're going to create more bugs than you fix.
Everyone has to work together against the common enemy (the corperate leaders).
That's because, as a rule, management's cluelessness about tech is the biggest threat to any large software project. They'll insist you do stupid things like create "prototypes" before gathering user requirements- only to also then insist that you ship the prototype as a finished product "until the next release is ready". The corporate leaders ARE the common enemy of all software design.
In the computer engineering field, this seems like bs to me. Individual engineers have a high degree of power over whether a project successes or fails.
You've apparently never had to deal with an unreasonable management. And, it's how Individual Engineers work together on the TEAM that dicates success or failure- a good team leader will tune individual assignments to skills and creativity levels, but if you have a rogue who is too creative for his own good, it won't matter how good his skills are.
In unionized jobs, the individual workers have little or no control of the process
I've yet to see ANY software lifecycle where the engineers have more control over the process than the end users.
Unless your kid appeared out of thin air, the moron is the one who stuck his hard-on in a hole and got the process rolling. I realize that you're a stupid socialist whiner, but I'm betting with some coaching in biology even you could figure out who THAT is. I realize that socialists don't like to hear this, but you have no right under the U.S. Constitution to play "hide-the-sausage" and have society protect you from the outcomes when you lose at that game.
Now you're really the idiot- you don't even know the basic cause of Cerebral Palsy is Hospital Error. (hint: there's only ONE way to get brain damaged during birth).
And apparently you libertarians have forgotten the entire reason civil marriage is endorsed by the state to begin with: to create the next generation of workers. Has been for about 5000 years now.
I'm through with you- you obviously don't know the first thing about living in civilization. If you don't want to pay taxes, here's a hint: they can't tax what they can't find. Go live as a hermit.
I can't wait to see somebody sell a "vintage" copy of Office 6.0- on all 25 floppies.....and Win95 when it first came out was also on floppy, took 15 of them.
Lukily it's not all MY code....and most certainly a good deal of it does. This has got to be the most complex project I've ever worked on, and it doesn't help one whit that while the project is designed to follow good software development life cycle standards (with all of the extra documentation that implies), quite often the coding is being done before the analysis of user requirements is complete in practice, thus createing a horrific hodge-podge of patches on top of patches on top of patches.....
Changing jobs when it suits you is not avoiding responsibility, it's called managing your career. If you've got the skills then your financial obligations shouldn't prevent you from "right-sizing" your employer at your convenience ... unless of course you're a socialist moron who expects to have his livelihood handed to him without putting out any effort. If that's the case then you should have been more conservative with your finances. Either way you are not deserving of any sympathy.
When you have a kid with CP, or any other illness that can't be insured because it's "preexisting", and your insurance is tied to your employer, let me know. Until then, you're the moron. No amount of skills will change the system in the United States that makes employment more indentured servitude than employment.
If your skillset can be exported to India for $2.50/hr, then that's probably where you ought to move if you're not willing (or able) to stay ahead of the curve and put yourself in a position to command more for your skills (or find some skills that CAN'T be exported for $2.50/hr).
I can't afford the $3 million India charges for a guest worker visa- so I'm trapped.
And when you lose that war, do we get to kill you, or will we have to settle for enslaving you?
We all lose that war- merely being forced to fight it because the future is no worse than if you didn't insures that in the end, all will be dead.
Here's the beauty of economics. If the Chinese and the Indians truly do have a comparative advantage at creating software then that means that everyone that uses software will benefit as more software production is moved overseas.
David Ricardo was a liar- it hasn't worked that way for 30 years.
Sure, you'll have to find something else to do, but everyone that buys software will benefit. No one is going to go to war to preserve your job because chances are good that they will actually benefit from the shift.
The problem is, chances are NOT good that they will actually benefit from the shift- it hasn't worked that way for 30 years, and because of sticking to the lie instead of admiting the truth, Americans now spend 108% of what they earn just to stay in one place.
Hooray for economics!
Economics is as much of a lie as the idea that Lenin was a Marxist (he wasn't- he was a con artist using the promises of Marxism to turn the state into a corporation).
You can try and fight economics if you want, but its not likely to help. Free markets are as old as mankind, and even in places like the former Soviet Union, where the government tried to limit the power of the market, markets still had a very powerful influence on the economy.
That's funny. The Soviet Union didn't try to limit the power of the market, they merely allowed the State to corner the market's power.
So declare war on India and China if you wish, just don't be surprised when your army turns out to be pathetically small, and full of deranged lunatics.
On deranged lunatic is more trustworthy than all the economists and corporatists in the world right now.
Business Ethics
Actually, this was the class that convinced me the opposite- that people should be honest in business rather than redefining words to suit their own purposes. What part of this class led you to believe that C-level executives do not mean what they say?
Um. Employment verification is done to make sure that you're not obtaining hundreds of thousands of dollars fraudulently with no hope of repaying it. The bank has lots of little actuaries and statisticians crunching numbers, and they've found that -- based on a statistical analysis of past default / repayment data -- "MOST" people who have had a job for the last X years are "creditworthy" customers, who will, in all probability, be able to continue making the loan payments that they're signing on to make. The bank is not in the business of losing money, it's in the business of making money... so is this an unreasonable thing for them to ask? The employer simply says, "Yeah, he's worked here for the past 2 years." They're not making any guarantee that you'll continue working there for the next 48.
.25 acre lot. That would be a financial stretch for just about anybody.
It is NOT an unreasonable thing to ask. It's a pretty bad set of statistics to base stuff on though- we didn't have "free trade" before Clinton.
No, the answer is that having been able to hold the same job for 2 years (not exactly that long a time to have held a job, really) makes you, statistically, quite likely to be able to continue making payments to the bank, and therefore you are a good investment, rather than a bad risk. Unemployment is an explanation for being unable to make a payment, but you're right -- it's no excuse. If you don't have sufficient cash reserves to weather a downturn in the market, and a couple months of unemployment, then you shouldn't buy a house. The bank isn't in business to lose money, as I may have already mentioned.
Agreed. Too bad they're acting like they are- after all, until I experienced it myself, I never expected to be unemployed for 6 months, let alone 26 or 36. Their statistics are simply wrong in today's job market- a very bad assumption on their part.
Depends on what you're calling the "American Dream," doesn't it? If the American Dream consists of a modestly sized house in a decent neighborhood, then it's quite possible to achieve that -- people do it every day on far less than the average IT worker makes. If the American dream consists of a 3000 sq ft loft on the upper west side, with a parking space for your ferrari and a helipad where your helicopter can pick you up to take you to your weekend home in the Hamptons, then no, most people won't achieve that.
Boy, you sure are out of touch with the housing market. I'll give you a bit of a hint- I live in an area of Oregon that supposedly is half as expensive as LA or New York. My last refinance had the value of my modest little 1200SQ ft 3br 2ba at a QUARTER OF A MILLION. That's right- $250,000 for a 1200 SQ ft house on a
Yes, they can and do afford the current housing market, in LOTS of areas of the country. One of my friends & his wife, with a combined household income of about 55 - 60k/year, just bought a decent house about an hour outside of Boston, and they're quite comfortable and happy with it. Could they afford a place IN boston, or much closer to Boston? No, probably not. But it's *always* been expensive to live in/near the city. I don't know where you live, but I see young people successfully purchasing houses all the time around where I live.
They're "successfully purchasing" them because of interest-only loans and tricks like that 50 year mortgage. If those tricks (which you and I agreed were finanically irresponsible back just three messages) were not available, if only people that the banks could be 100% certain would be able to pay back the mortgage could get loans, there's no way somebody in your friend's or my income level would ever be able to afford a house. And if housing prices keep outstripping income increases by 4% every year (as they have since I bought my house in 1999) then no, not even those tricks will work for long.
Um. Where in their marketing literature do you see that one of the terms or conditions of the loan is that you hold the same job for 50 years?
... but I don't think they're saying they expect you to stay at the same job, or with the same company for 50 years. How you make your payments is your concern, and as long as the bank gets their money on the 15th of the month, I don't think they really care who's paying you.
In the paper you AND your employer sign verifying your employment before they give you the loan. Maybe not a term exactly- but certainly an implied expectation that you will HAVE a job to repay the loan, and they make your employer co-sign it.
I don't think it's unreasonable for a mortgage to demand that you to be able to make your payments for 50 years, if that's the term of the loan
Neither do I. I just feel like a liar signing the paper- when I don't know if I'll be able to make the payments in 6 months, let alone 15, 20, 30, or 50 years. I've got cash reserves at this point (2 years after ending my long unemployment) of maybe 3 months.
Agreed- so why verify employment to begin with? Why require two years employment with the same company before you even get the loan? The answer is because they expect you to keep making those payments on the 15th of the month- unemployment is no excuse.
And let's be honest: if you take out a 50-year mortgage, you're probably stretching yourself beyond your means in order to afford a house you can't really afford given your current income level, and future income expectations. I've seen a couple friends get into trouble with some of the new-fangled ARMs and other niche mortgage products, and at the end of the day, what they're doing is stretching themselves to the limit with NO safety net in order to afford "more house". And that's not wise & responsible fiscal planning.
Let's be honest- with the 50% inflation in housing cost over the last 5 years, no American can afford the American Dream under "wise & responsible fiscal planning" anymore. The housing bubble is just that- a speculative bubble. It will burst eventually- and millions will be left homeless as banks foreclose on property that isn't worth 1/10th what they lent on it. NOBODY can afford the current housing market unless we all want to live in 8x10 shacks (and in many areas of the country, not even then!)
1. The Kwakiutal Nation extended all the way down to California, and consisted of hundreds of tribes.
2. In 1835, the Kalapuya tribe of the Kwakiutal nation was infected with Malaria, killing off 95% of the population of the Willamette Valley (and, incidentally, giving the Willamette it's name).
3. The remaining tribe members intermarried with white settlers- many of their descendants today appear white.
4. I know this because I listened to the tribal elders when I was young- TV is for whimps.
Dude, you have no clue about the Kwakiutal, do you?
I gave up in 2002. I no longer trust what ANYBODY in the industry has to say about job availability- it's all just a lie in an attempt to get more H-1b visas and to attempt to convince more American schoolchildren to become slaves to a career that isn't respected or valued.
The funny thing is 9/11 was my freshman year, and Iraq started my junior year. After Iraq, about a quarter of the student body engaged in a long-term civil disobedience campaign in which we would remain sitting during the pledge, or on particularly bad days we would stand with our backs to it.
The administration didn't like that much, but it's not as if they are going to call up the Texas National Guard to force us to pledge.
Given the time period you gave, it's not like they could if they wanted to- the Texas National Guard was serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was a half-a-world-away.
Well, there is one more step there- after the three years of unemployment, I took a consultant position in a union-only shop, because the only way you get a union job is to already BE a known quantity in a union-only shop...and take EVERY opportunity to grow your skills.
But have you ever noticed that the so-called "American Dream" is based on stability (the newest home loans expect you to be in the same job for 50 years!), but American Jobs aren't? That is what was confusing me- and that's why I need something more than just seeing opportunity to stay employed. You can see all the opportunity you want- but in the end it's just illusion, just smoke and mirrors, and there is no such thing as community, country, nation, or loyalty left.
PS. I am not sure if there is a duck in Christmas Carol.
There is a goose (Pigs and turkeys apparently being highly unusual in 19th century London butcher shops at Christmas).
I hope we can all see the difference between these two statements. I got dizzy trying to explain the disconnect in reasoning.
What you fail to see is that the only difference between communism and capitalism is who gets rich- a few con-artist families or a con-artist political party. BOTH are lying to you- opportunity is a scam, hope is worthless.
How about C) Teach people to save money and avoid debt, so that bouts of unemployment or career change don't ruin their lives.
Yep- and in so doing totally destroy the consumerism that has kept this country going through 30 years of failed trade policy...I like it!
I think I'll use that at our next team meeting when the project manager asks why something breaks every time we fix something else.
If your project was destined for commercial success, and your company could have made a reasonable profit with it on the market, they wouldn't have pulled the plug on it.
Profit is as profit does- they were looking at the short term rather than the long term.
either you just couldn't see it because you were so invested in the work that you were blinded to the simple fact that it was a solution in search of a problem?
Except for it was working in the beta test site- and in fact had increased profitability by 30% just by catching some wierd accounting that was going on.
or, your team was a bunch of arrogant prima donnas who figured you were going to rock the world, and ended up producing a crappy product that nobody would take for free, much less pay for?
Actually there's a third option you missed- a lesson I didn't learn until years later. By the stock market Any project that is not marketable within 4 months is a failure.
Alternately, perhaps it is the case that The PHBs really were complete effing morons; In that case, they ran the company into the ground, and that's a hell of a shame, but if the project truly was a potential blockbuster, why not simply contact the developers who worked on it with you, start your own company, and bring the product to market?
Because the bankruptcy court confiscated the sourcecode.
But yeah, I guess choosing 3 years of unemployment spent trying to find a unionized IT job is an equally reasonable response to handling the "money-sucking" responsibilities and the duty to your DNA that you seem to love talking about.
I think you're taking 2 different story lines and conflating them- you see, the PHB story came from my first employment, after which I was employed again after 2 weeks. The second job lasted a year and a half, and I was employed again *before* being laid off. The third job lasted 6 months and WAS a crappy project. The fourth lasted two and a half years- and that's when the 3 years of unemployment struck. By the fourth one- I was *seriously* invested in several money-sucking responsibilities, and while my savings lasted and we're still in the house- everything is gone. 401k, savings, past judgements for wages unpaid, everything. THAT is why I'm giving up.
The Swastika was Aryan- specifically Indo-Chinese Aryan. They were trying to link themselves to the ancient race that conquored India.
government employee unions which is the number one source of crooked lobby and campaign money.
Uh- the government lobbies only have a fraction of the money companies like Enron do.
True- but novels= complexity in people's minds, and they're always measured in numbers of words. Note- I only put forth my quarter-million lines of code project as an example- the real comparison is space taken up by the source code of both the novel and the project. 25 MB is 250x 100kbytes....