And then I posted the response to the next post- I'm not sure I like slashdot's new posting/moderation system. But here's the gist- I was getting a bit wierd and mixing my Kwakiutal Nativism with my Roman Catholicism- thus the purpose of life would be to procreate and live on the land your culture has evolved to live on. 9000 years of evolving the Kwakiutal did before white man brought malaria to wipe out the tribes and clear the land for settlers.
Good, I'm glad I found this again- 4 hours ago I was begining to get a bit odd, yes. What this is refering to is the basis of my current philosophy- that the purpose we are put on this earth for is to beget life. As for wandering- my ancestors stayed in one place for 9000 years until a bunch of whites brought malaria to kill off 95% of the tribe. How about yours?
I like it. Too bad it's wrong- it's possible to build a feeling institution. It just has to be very, very, small. No larger than the tribe- no more than about 500 people max. Once it gets beyond that- completely correct.
Easiest way I've found- though it's begining to get a bit outdated thanks to bloatware. Charles Dicken's famous novel is about 100k. This makes it easy to estimate source code in terms of number of copies of that novel. The quarter-million lines of code project I'm currently working on takes about 25 MB to store- 25000k, or 250 copies of A Christmas Carol.
And whose fault is this? Take responsibility for your position in life. If life deals you shit, pile it up and make fertilizer.
You mean kind of like economists do when they prop up Capitalism's lies with stupid shit like David Ricardo's fake theory of Comparative Advantage (which the last 30 years worth of trade deficits in the United States has proven to be complete bunk) or supporting anonymous markets despite the destruction to local communities by supporting fungible commodities?
There's plenty of shit happening preventing people from changing their position in life, regardless of what that is- the world would be far better without any of it. Give the Kwakiutal back their land and go back where you came from, whitey.
Of all the other responses since I hit 30 posts in 4 hours, this is the ONLY one I find worth responding to:
Just so I'm clear on this, did they really say that you had a job for life? Or was this just a "permanant position" as opposed to a "temporary position"? There's a big difference.
And that difference is exactly my point. In my young, out of school, days, I thought "permanent" meant "permanent", as in, a position as long as there was a company to support it. This was in my 2nd job out of school- the first had gone bankrupt out from under me, and I had found the 2nd in 2 weeks. I took it to mean PERMANENT, not some lie. I now no longer believe any of it- and if I could completely withdraw from the fsking' market I would. In fact, that's the other half of what I'm working on- as soon as I'm debt free 100% of my investment will be going into land with the express purpose of buying a portion of the United States and seceeding from the union. It's the only way out as far as I can see.
If you really cared about keeping a roof over your family's heads you would be looking for a new job that paid more, not hiding where you can follow the path of least resistance to keep the paychecks coming in.
I've got a kid with Cerebral Palsy- I can't afford to let his health insurance lapse, ever. You be brave- I'll take care of my family first, even if I have to start killing people to do so.
Getting a new job doesn't mean quitting and then looking for a job. Since when did it hurt anyone to start looking on their own time?
What own time? If you're on salary, you're working 70 hours a week to keep that salary.
It's a free labor market
No it isn't. One side has all the jobs, the other side doesn't. There are 3000 applicants for every position.
Ever hear of missiles? When threatened with the equivalent of war, one should go to war. After all, it's not like you're going to be allowed to survive either way. It's going to be just as bad letting India and China take away our livelihood as if they had attacked us with nukes- so we might as well try a preemptive strike or two.
Not really- it just means that you've got fewer responsibilities in your personal life and are a traitor to your own DNA. That's the only way you would have been able to move around so much.
1. So someone who doesn't have a wife and kids is a failure to you?
Not just to me, but to a million years of evolution behind their particular DNA strand.
2. Who wrote the social contract and what government agency is in charge of enforcing it? When did I sign it?
Without the social contract, government does not exist- nor does society- nor do corporations. You signed it by being born into the society, and everybody more powerful than you is in charge of enforcing it. They're failing.
In this case why in the world would you still want that job. If you did have a union before hand, the company would have just shut down the entire operation. What would a union do about that?
Call it naitivete- I wanted to finish the project. I always want to finish the project- and that motivation goes beyond anything the company can do to me. In fact, it's the real reason I work- to do projects and to finish them.
Wow, that's a startling level of naivete on your part. I don't know where you'd go to find an economy that's less "rotten" and would provide the security you seek.
Well, maybe back about 50 years? But actually, I've given up on private industry- and am currently interviewing for a job with my local Department of Transportation. If we run out of money for roads, we're all in trouble.
Another stupifyingly naive assertion. Shareholders and management are after profit, which can be achieved a number of ways, depending on the market in question.
And in the stock market, the #1 way of achieving profit is to cut costs, and take your profits before you kill the business entirely.
In a mature industry, cost cutting may well achieve a one-time gain in profit (outsourcing for cheaper labor, and hopefully a minimal reduction in performance). Quite often, however, the road to profit is through expertise and innovation (think Google), which pretty much rules out cheap-labor outsourcing for all but the most mundane tasks.
Yes, but Google has yet to actually turn a profit, by stock market standards. And any project that takes more than 3 months won't either.
I'm thinking that you need some anger management counseling...
That would have been good advice 5 years ago- it's too late for me now.
Children are a form of immortality- your DNA lives on in them, your teachings and customs live on in them, after you are dead. That's why they are the only responsibility that counts.
Institutions aren't deserving of any feelings of "loyalty," since they have none in return. A corporation feels nothing when it fires the 30-year veteran or the 6-month temp hire.
Then we should be either a) teaching this in grade school, that business people lie through their teeth and can't be trusted at all, or b) not allow such institutions to exist at all.
The folks who are really essential are those who have both seniority and skill. Someone who's been a QA lackey for five years isn't going to be more valuable than an individual who's been doing design and implementation for two years -- particularly if the latter is adept at maintaining others' code, which is a skill many have.
My current project just lost a QA lackey after 8 months that turned out to have skills we are finding very tough to replace.
Having the good people leave such that one has only the newbies and the idiots who've been around from the beginning because they were the CEO's college buddies is a pretty damn good way to kill a company, too.
Yes, it can be. But a union is a way to keep the good people around- if you write the contracts right.
You're using seniority as a sole measure of an individual's value to the company. Is it important? Sure! Is it the only thing that's important? Hell, no! A company should be free to assign values to its employees as it sees fit: If folks are important because they are one of the few who understand the design of some tool they wrote way-back-when that's still in production, or if folks are important because they're the ones who are coming up with the brilliant design leaps -- in any event, the company should have the flexibility to value them appropriately.
The average CEO isn't competent to assign value to tech people- from their point of view they're all equally worthless wastes of money.
All of the above- guilty as charged. Everybody taught me to do so from day 1- "work hard, you'll get ahead". "Congradulations, we're offering you a PERMANENT job". All lies of course, and I'm paying for it now.
Oh yes, and if all of us tech workers in America join a union, I'm sure it'll make those folks in India look that much less attractive! That's what we need in this country -- make us even more expensive to hire.
Depends what you do as a union. If we all went to the west coast and cut the transpacific fiber optic cables, what do you think that will do to telecomuting from India?
They are the only ones that count. All others will be gone in 100 years- but if you have grandkids, they'll live on.
However, having said that- family responsibilities tie you down. Thanks to the bankruptcy courts, you can always get out of everything else, move halfway across the world, and get another job.
You don't have enough money saved up to be able to stay afloat financially while between jobs and you're claiming the GP is avoiding responsibility?
Your basic responsibility to society is to procreate. The reason society puts up with capitalism is that it allows people to procreate. If you can't do one or the other, there's a failure someplace.
It sound to me like you are the one who is avoiding responsibility. If you were fired tomorrow how would you feed your family or keep your home?
I managed for three years to do that- right now I've refinanced again and taken out private unemployment insurance, no longer trusting anything or anybody. Oh yeah- and from now on I'm only putting out resumes to UNION shops because you can't trust anybody else worth shit.
Being financially independent enough to leave a job when you are unhappy with the working conditions is about the most responsible you can be.
Not all of us start out life with a trust fund. Nice that you started with a silver spoon in your mouth, but the rest of us didn't.
I'm worth what my employer pays me.
Either that or he's too stupid to realize he can get the same job done in China at 1/100th the cost.
So? Your investment and choices in life are not your company's responsibility to deal with.
Exactly why a non-union shop no longer deserves my loyalty or my resume. If they can't be bothered to support the basic social contract, they don't deserve my support- or the support of my tax money in the form of incorporation papers.
It's better to loose *some* jobs than to have the entire company collapse like the auto industry is collapsing to foreign competition. Which would you have? A small lay off, or a complete plant closing? pick your poison.
How about cutting managment jobs first? Since after all, it's their fault that they can't keep up with foreign competition with their million-dollar-a-year salaries.
I choose opportunity over communism.
And in return, they've chosen to give you neither.
If you can't remain employeed, then you shouldn't be digging yourself into massive debt and expecting someone else to deal with your poor choices.
And if you tell me I have a PERMANENT position, then it'd better be permanent- or you can expect me to come to your house and fill your head full of lead.
Perhaps you should have considered your family plans in your financial plans. Or perhaps you did, and you decided that running closer to the margin was a good idea. Regardless, I didn't make your bed, so I'm not the one who has to lie in it.
I thought I had. I took them at their word- that they couldn't afford more salary, and that a PERMANENT job meant PERMANENT (as opposed to, we'll toss you for no reason when we feel like it). But they're liars- just like everybody else in this rotten economy.
No, it can't. An inferior version of your job can be done. Some employers will go that route. Some won't. Woe betide those who pick the wrong one.
They don't want the superior job- superior jobs are not respected by stockholders or managment.
I'm as sad as the next guy when my employment doesn't work out, but expecting someone else to be responsible for my choices is unreasonable.
I expect them to tell the truth- and pay for it with their lives when they don't.
Laid off for three years.... that stinks. The longest I have been without a job since completing college was 2 months. Even through the bubble and through 4 layoffs. Perhaps it is because I don't go through life with the same chip on my shoulder. Perhaps it is because I am a hard worker that people enjoy being around. Truthfully, I think it is because I don't believe I have a right to a job and am thankful to come to work each day... and by you name and attitude, I bet that is foreign to you.
The name and attitude came *after* 2001. Until then, I was the same as you. Now I refuse to even apply for non-union work- and think that anybody who "doesn't believe they have a right to a job" either has never heard of the social contract or is so irresponsible in their personal life that they don't have any money-sucking responsibilities (such as wife, kids, etc). Such people are failures to me.
They might think of me and the rest of the developers like this but we think of them as holding an MBA because they failed out of Comp Sci or Engineering and should be looked upon as slackers doing painfully boring work (accounting?). If they decided to pull some shit like you just described it wouldn't take long to convince my fellow developers to threaten a strike. Are they gonna replace 20 experienced programmers overnight? I don't think so, our product has a huge learning curve. Just in time unionization is far more productive then dealing with a teamsters style beuracracy.
True enough- but by the time I noticed what was going on at that job, I had no more experienced programmers- or in fact, other than me, no more programmers at all. Once the PHBs abandon the project, it's too late to form a union.
Slashdot Mirror
And then I posted the response to the next post- I'm not sure I like slashdot's new posting/moderation system. But here's the gist- I was getting a bit wierd and mixing my Kwakiutal Nativism with my Roman Catholicism- thus the purpose of life would be to procreate and live on the land your culture has evolved to live on. 9000 years of evolving the Kwakiutal did before white man brought malaria to wipe out the tribes and clear the land for settlers.
Good, I'm glad I found this again- 4 hours ago I was begining to get a bit odd, yes. What this is refering to is the basis of my current philosophy- that the purpose we are put on this earth for is to beget life. As for wandering- my ancestors stayed in one place for 9000 years until a bunch of whites brought malaria to kill off 95% of the tribe. How about yours?
I like it. Too bad it's wrong- it's possible to build a feeling institution. It just has to be very, very, small. No larger than the tribe- no more than about 500 people max. Once it gets beyond that- completely correct.
Easiest way I've found- though it's begining to get a bit outdated thanks to bloatware. Charles Dicken's famous novel is about 100k. This makes it easy to estimate source code in terms of number of copies of that novel. The quarter-million lines of code project I'm currently working on takes about 25 MB to store- 25000k, or 250 copies of A Christmas Carol.
And whose fault is this? Take responsibility for your position in life. If life deals you shit, pile it up and make fertilizer.
You mean kind of like economists do when they prop up Capitalism's lies with stupid shit like David Ricardo's fake theory of Comparative Advantage (which the last 30 years worth of trade deficits in the United States has proven to be complete bunk) or supporting anonymous markets despite the destruction to local communities by supporting fungible commodities?
There's plenty of shit happening preventing people from changing their position in life, regardless of what that is- the world would be far better without any of it. Give the Kwakiutal back their land and go back where you came from, whitey.
Of all the other responses since I hit 30 posts in 4 hours, this is the ONLY one I find worth responding to:
Just so I'm clear on this, did they really say that you had a job for life? Or was this just a "permanant position" as opposed to a "temporary position"? There's a big difference.
And that difference is exactly my point. In my young, out of school, days, I thought "permanent" meant "permanent", as in, a position as long as there was a company to support it. This was in my 2nd job out of school- the first had gone bankrupt out from under me, and I had found the 2nd in 2 weeks. I took it to mean PERMANENT, not some lie. I now no longer believe any of it- and if I could completely withdraw from the fsking' market I would. In fact, that's the other half of what I'm working on- as soon as I'm debt free 100% of my investment will be going into land with the express purpose of buying a portion of the United States and seceeding from the union. It's the only way out as far as I can see.
If you really cared about keeping a roof over your family's heads you would be looking for a new job that paid more, not hiding where you can follow the path of least resistance to keep the paychecks coming in.
I've got a kid with Cerebral Palsy- I can't afford to let his health insurance lapse, ever. You be brave- I'll take care of my family first, even if I have to start killing people to do so.
Getting a new job doesn't mean quitting and then looking for a job. Since when did it hurt anyone to start looking on their own time?
What own time? If you're on salary, you're working 70 hours a week to keep that salary.
It's a free labor market
No it isn't. One side has all the jobs, the other side doesn't. There are 3000 applicants for every position.
Ever hear of missiles? When threatened with the equivalent of war, one should go to war. After all, it's not like you're going to be allowed to survive either way. It's going to be just as bad letting India and China take away our livelihood as if they had attacked us with nukes- so we might as well try a preemptive strike or two.
I've moved around a bit
This proves the point.
My anecdote trumps yours.
Not really- it just means that you've got fewer responsibilities in your personal life and are a traitor to your own DNA. That's the only way you would have been able to move around so much.
Cut the fiber optic cable? Is that really productive?
It's more productive then letting a bunch of liars profit off of their lies.
1. So someone who doesn't have a wife and kids is a failure to you?
Not just to me, but to a million years of evolution behind their particular DNA strand.
2. Who wrote the social contract and what government agency is in charge of enforcing it? When did I sign it?
Without the social contract, government does not exist- nor does society- nor do corporations. You signed it by being born into the society, and everybody more powerful than you is in charge of enforcing it. They're failing.
In this case why in the world would you still want that job. If you did have a union before hand, the company would have just shut down the entire operation. What would a union do about that?
Call it naitivete- I wanted to finish the project. I always want to finish the project- and that motivation goes beyond anything the company can do to me. In fact, it's the real reason I work- to do projects and to finish them.
Wow, that's a startling level of naivete on your part. I don't know where you'd go to find an economy that's less "rotten" and would provide the security you seek.
Well, maybe back about 50 years? But actually, I've given up on private industry- and am currently interviewing for a job with my local Department of Transportation. If we run out of money for roads, we're all in trouble.
Another stupifyingly naive assertion. Shareholders and management are after profit, which can be achieved a number of ways, depending on the market in question.
And in the stock market, the #1 way of achieving profit is to cut costs, and take your profits before you kill the business entirely.
In a mature industry, cost cutting may well achieve a one-time gain in profit (outsourcing for cheaper labor, and hopefully a minimal reduction in performance). Quite often, however, the road to profit is through expertise and innovation (think Google), which pretty much rules out cheap-labor outsourcing for all but the most mundane tasks.
Yes, but Google has yet to actually turn a profit, by stock market standards. And any project that takes more than 3 months won't either.
I'm thinking that you need some anger management counseling...
That would have been good advice 5 years ago- it's too late for me now.
That's your first mistake. Loyality at jobs is a one sided deal. Permanent never ever means permanent.
Agreed, but that doesn't make it any less a lie, or the person who claims it any less of a liar.
As for "rotten economy": I have to call FUD on that one. The stock market is near an all time high, and unemployment is near an all time low.
And wages adjusted for inflation are at an all time low as well.
Children are a form of immortality- your DNA lives on in them, your teachings and customs live on in them, after you are dead. That's why they are the only responsibility that counts.
Agreed that I was Naive. But on this:
Institutions aren't deserving of any feelings of "loyalty," since they have none in return. A corporation feels nothing when it fires the 30-year veteran or the 6-month temp hire.
Then we should be either a) teaching this in grade school, that business people lie through their teeth and can't be trusted at all, or b) not allow such institutions to exist at all.
The folks who are really essential are those who have both seniority and skill. Someone who's been a QA lackey for five years isn't going to be more valuable than an individual who's been doing design and implementation for two years -- particularly if the latter is adept at maintaining others' code, which is a skill many have.
My current project just lost a QA lackey after 8 months that turned out to have skills we are finding very tough to replace.
Having the good people leave such that one has only the newbies and the idiots who've been around from the beginning because they were the CEO's college buddies is a pretty damn good way to kill a company, too.
Yes, it can be. But a union is a way to keep the good people around- if you write the contracts right.
You're using seniority as a sole measure of an individual's value to the company. Is it important? Sure! Is it the only thing that's important? Hell, no! A company should be free to assign values to its employees as it sees fit: If folks are important because they are one of the few who understand the design of some tool they wrote way-back-when that's still in production, or if folks are important because they're the ones who are coming up with the brilliant design leaps -- in any event, the company should have the flexibility to value them appropriately.
The average CEO isn't competent to assign value to tech people- from their point of view they're all equally worthless wastes of money.
All of the above- guilty as charged. Everybody taught me to do so from day 1- "work hard, you'll get ahead". "Congradulations, we're offering you a PERMANENT job". All lies of course, and I'm paying for it now.
Oh yes, and if all of us tech workers in America join a union, I'm sure it'll make those folks in India look that much less attractive! That's what we need in this country -- make us even more expensive to hire.
Depends what you do as a union. If we all went to the west coast and cut the transpacific fiber optic cables, what do you think that will do to telecomuting from India?
They are the only ones that count. All others will be gone in 100 years- but if you have grandkids, they'll live on.
However, having said that- family responsibilities tie you down. Thanks to the bankruptcy courts, you can always get out of everything else, move halfway across the world, and get another job.
You don't have enough money saved up to be able to stay afloat financially while between jobs and you're claiming the GP is avoiding responsibility?
Your basic responsibility to society is to procreate. The reason society puts up with capitalism is that it allows people to procreate. If you can't do one or the other, there's a failure someplace.
It sound to me like you are the one who is avoiding responsibility. If you were fired tomorrow how would you feed your family or keep your home?
I managed for three years to do that- right now I've refinanced again and taken out private unemployment insurance, no longer trusting anything or anybody. Oh yeah- and from now on I'm only putting out resumes to UNION shops because you can't trust anybody else worth shit.
Being financially independent enough to leave a job when you are unhappy with the working conditions is about the most responsible you can be.
Not all of us start out life with a trust fund. Nice that you started with a silver spoon in your mouth, but the rest of us didn't.
I'm worth what my employer pays me.
Either that or he's too stupid to realize he can get the same job done in China at 1/100th the cost.
So? Your investment and choices in life are not your company's responsibility to deal with.
Exactly why a non-union shop no longer deserves my loyalty or my resume. If they can't be bothered to support the basic social contract, they don't deserve my support- or the support of my tax money in the form of incorporation papers.
It's better to loose *some* jobs than to have the entire company collapse like the auto industry is collapsing to foreign competition. Which would you have? A small lay off, or a complete plant closing? pick your poison.
How about cutting managment jobs first? Since after all, it's their fault that they can't keep up with foreign competition with their million-dollar-a-year salaries.
I choose opportunity over communism.
And in return, they've chosen to give you neither.
If you can't remain employeed, then you shouldn't be digging yourself into massive debt and expecting someone else to deal with your poor choices.
And if you tell me I have a PERMANENT position, then it'd better be permanent- or you can expect me to come to your house and fill your head full of lead.
Perhaps you should have considered your family plans in your financial plans. Or perhaps you did, and you decided that running closer to the margin was a good idea. Regardless, I didn't make your bed, so I'm not the one who has to lie in it.
I thought I had. I took them at their word- that they couldn't afford more salary, and that a PERMANENT job meant PERMANENT (as opposed to, we'll toss you for no reason when we feel like it). But they're liars- just like everybody else in this rotten economy.
No, it can't. An inferior version of your job can be done. Some employers will go that route. Some won't. Woe betide those who pick the wrong one.
They don't want the superior job- superior jobs are not respected by stockholders or managment.
I'm as sad as the next guy when my employment doesn't work out, but expecting someone else to be responsible for my choices is unreasonable.
I expect them to tell the truth- and pay for it with their lives when they don't.
Laid off for three years.... that stinks. The longest I have been without a job since completing college was 2 months. Even through the bubble and through 4 layoffs. Perhaps it is because I don't go through life with the same chip on my shoulder. Perhaps it is because I am a hard worker that people enjoy being around. Truthfully, I think it is because I don't believe I have a right to a job and am thankful to come to work each day... and by you name and attitude, I bet that is foreign to you.
The name and attitude came *after* 2001. Until then, I was the same as you. Now I refuse to even apply for non-union work- and think that anybody who "doesn't believe they have a right to a job" either has never heard of the social contract or is so irresponsible in their personal life that they don't have any money-sucking responsibilities (such as wife, kids, etc). Such people are failures to me.
They might think of me and the rest of the developers like this but we think of them as holding an MBA because they failed out of Comp Sci or Engineering and should be looked upon as slackers doing painfully boring work (accounting?). If they decided to pull some shit like you just described it wouldn't take long to convince my fellow developers to threaten a strike. Are they gonna replace 20 experienced programmers overnight? I don't think so, our product has a huge learning curve. Just in time unionization is far more productive then dealing with a teamsters style beuracracy.
True enough- but by the time I noticed what was going on at that job, I had no more experienced programmers- or in fact, other than me, no more programmers at all. Once the PHBs abandon the project, it's too late to form a union.