There's lots of ways to approach negotiations over something like this and they're not always taken as a negative. Only twice have I had to walk away from jobs because they wouldn't budge on a non-compete.
I won't repeat the previous advice, which is very good, but will add this suggestion. You always have the option to have them contract for your service with your own company. In some cases that will even save them money because they don't have to handle your taxes. It's not that expensive to run your own company or straight 1099. You need professional liability insurance, about 300-400 a year last time I priced it. An LLC is nice, but ask a lawyer because it's not always as much protection for a sole proprietor as it is for partnerships. And a DBA (Doing Business As) bank account. Then you can negotiate as a vendor and not as an employee. It gives them some advantages and you a lot of them. Depending on where you live and local ordinances. But most cities and counties have some kind of program for small businesses. And you'll need a tax guy for handling your quarterly tax payments, license fees and health insurance.
Figure your hourly rate on the salary they were offering plus 30%. You won't clear as much, but you'll be a lot happier.
What they won't like is if you're there for 10 hours you can bill them for 10 hours. They can't soak any extra work out of you. The flip side of that coin is they can work you for 90 hours a week and not pay any overtime.
A bad day working for yourself is better than the best day you'll have as an employee. And at-will employment is pretty much zero protection for you. Strangely your vendor contract will usually be written by you and will be a lot less complicated than the crap they want you to sign as an employee. Basically this is work for hire, what they pay for is what they own. And you can negotiate to use your own equipment and work off-site some days.
The downside to this is a lot of companies like having employees under their thumb and it will be entirely obvious that you are not. But they'll shrug if off with, "Oh, he's a contractor and doesn't have to do..." whatever.
It costs you a couple bucks for some Windows licenses. In the grand scheme of your business, it is an insignificant cost.
Insignificant to who? I don't know what kind of business you have, but to a lot of us those license costs are absolutely f'ing insane. I can take the money I would've spent on one copy of XP and pay for web hosting for a year. For the cost of one copy of Office I can build a really decent PC or buy a monitor. For the cost of MS Small Business Server I could build a network storage device.
I'm glad your business is so flush with cash that you can squander it on MS licenses, but some of the rest of us don't have that luxury.
Besides, if it came down to a choice between hiring someone and paying MS, I'd opt for spending the money on a real human being opposed to a faceless corporation that doesn't give a crap about me or them.
Buy, hey, I'm glad you can lay off people without a second thought. Doesn't matter as long as you have your condo in South Beach, right? Unfortunately I think about their wives, their kids and how long they might be out of work.
I'm glad you're okay with things, because in a cynical moment I might be tempted to think you're part of what's wrong with this country.
The manufacturing and customer service jobs go first, then the tech jobs and it suddenly stops there. Bull-shit. After that it's accounting and HR, graphics and creative positions, account managers, sales. So, what's left? What's your next adjustment career? Anything that India and the Cheney administration are arguing for is guaranteed to be BAD for you.
real are still assholes, and i am glad cartalk is moving away from their format because of their shitty tactics.
And they always have been assholes to deal with, on the server and client side. You know you suck when people would rather deal with MS than you. lol. That's bad.
My sig is in jest, but truthfully I think the majority in Congress really want to do right by their constituents. But there's a disturbing elitist mentality developing that's clouding just what it is they think we want.
You can't say your Congressman's kid goes to the same schools, they don't. They go to very exclusive private schools. They have priveledged parking places, they ride in corporate jets to industry sponsored fund raisers in exotic locations, they are surrounded by people so far removed from the average American they could be from a different planet. The perks and the money start to skew their view of the world after a while. The people they socialize with, work with, and spend the most time with are not representative of your life. When I was there I called it being in the tank.
And you're definitely right about just complaining and not doing anything. You would be surprised the clout a few people working together have even in the insular world of the tank. The story I go back to is Omaha Beach in WWII.
The allied landing was going nowhere until a few survivors started going from man to man and encouraging them to just pick up a rifle and shoot back. Individually the effort was meaningless, but after a while the collective fire started to make a difference.
Don't worry about changing the world, just pick a word processor and start firing off polite and reasoned letters.
But John Ashcroft scares me way more than any group of terrorists. Terrorists can knock down buildings and kill people, but it takes the DOJ and Bush administration to undermine the freedoms that thousands have died to protect.
And the mentality that even THINKS creating a dossier on every citizen in the state is a good idea is absolutely abominable. I don't care if it's law enforcement or politics, time to get them into a new line of work.
When I was in college some people I knew (innocent look) would use the department photocopier for textbook duplication. It cost us a penny a page for the copier and saved us-- I mean them --a lot of money. That was years ago and they were expensive even then. When tuition was $250.00 a semester the textbook gouging was easier to overlook, now it's starting to hurt.
Man, it's expensive to be a young person these days. And I'm not even that old. Well, not compared to a tree anyway.
Seriously, as long as media companies, and I'm including music, try to avoid seeing their product as a commodity, they're going to keep coming up with brain dead ideas like this one. MS is barely getting away with it, what chance did Disney think they had?
If you jack people around on any commodity long enough and boost the price on them, they'll find ways to get by without your product and someone else will offer them better terms and eat into your market share. Movies, music and, increasingly, software are like gasoline, sugar and coffee. Inconvenient to live without, but consumers will adjust their consumption if you dick them enough.
Another classic case of the problem trying to dictate the solution.
Finding yet another security hole in IE is about as exciting as discovering more ice in Antarctica.
We could shorten it to MSIE Hole or MSHole and lump them all under one general category of Suck instead of Articles. Then we could sub-divide into SCOSuck and MSSuck.
Man, I just realized how often SCO and MS are mentioned in the same context. Suck. What company they keep. And MS has nothing to blame but their own greed and avarice. At least SCO can claim too much inbreeding in Utah.
They are neither improving nor are they visibly dying...
Patience. MS didn't get here overnight and they're not going away overnight. Think about the amount of institutional inertia to overcome just getting one customer switched over. Now multiply that by 95% of the desktops out there.
Change will happen-- is happening. Very deep and profound changes. Trying to stop Linux at this point is like trying to stop the tides. But even if the entire world committed to wholesale transition tomorrow it would still take years.
This probably isn't the year MS goes down, but they're definitely taking on more water than the pumps can handle. They'll go down, but over a span of years not in a year. It'll be more like peeling an onion, they'll die in layers. Little bits at a time.
I'm actually planning to enjoy watching it happen. Just because it's slow doesn't mean it won't be interesting.
anyone not willing to do a fair amount of research on their own probably deserves Microsoft software.
ROFL! Can I borrow that line? Good one. There really is only one study that matters: The one you do in your own enterprise/office/home. Run some pilot programs. Experiment. Though I keep forgetting that most Windows admins are so busy just keeping things running they don't have time to do resource planning.
...to want to compete on a level playing field. Let Indian companies pay US taxes, US insurance rates, and other related costs of doing business here. Then let's see what they're charge out rates are like. What truly sickens me is them bringing Indian labor over here on L-1 visas. It's like our own government subsidizing moving jobs overseas.
I don't particularly want to live in a craphole country lined with shanty slums.
Someone who really has started a business before. lol. Reading some of the other posts it was obvious they've never actually run a business.
Keep expenses at the absolute bone and don't spend any money until you have to. Even if some VC was insane enough to give you startup money, the first thing they're going to do is start whacking all the expenses you don't really need.
Do spend a couple hundred bucks on professional liability insurance. It's cheap for IT consultants.
Starting your own business on a shoestring is also a great way to hide gaps in your employment history. Especially if you have a company name to point to.
An online game loosely modeled on the Star Trek universe. I was playing that back in '95 - '96 time frame. Player rankings were published on the server you were using and nationally.
And I must inform all of you that you may be intruding on my patent for exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide across a thin, moist membrane. I'm gonna own all of you bitches!
First he says they're not trying to cut anyone out of the process, but that's exactly what needs to happen. The middle-man is redundant. In this case the middle-man is beyond redundant, it's greedy and obstructive. Squeezing people at both ends of the transaction.
He also talks about artists giving away their product not making any sense and DRM almost in the same breath.
I'd put the/. community up against NASA any day. Instead of trying to be so secret about everything, open the software up to the community and let the collective propose solutions to some of these issues. Hey, it's our tax dollars developing all this stuff, why can't we play too?
Besides robot exploration software would be handy right here. It would be neat to be able to send a research bot out in the deserts, deep oceans and jungle canopies of the world. Machines can go where we can't.
Individually you can be damn annoying sometimes, but I'm constantly amazed and delighted by the collective intelligence of the/. pack.
Politics is a contact sport but I'm continually amazed and saddened by the lows to which the neo-cons will stoop to stay in power. Since it's pretty clear we're united in name only it's too bad we couldn't draw a line down the middle of the country and give everyone ten years to pick a side and move. Of course then we'd fight over who gets which side. If the left opted for the Pacific coast that means a lot of people in the upper east coast would have to move and if the right took that side we'd have to move 3/4's of California and the western halves of Washington and Oregon. Of course, we'd get Alabama and Florida in exchange.
There have always been political differences and disputes, but I never remember any time in my life that the country has been this divided and so viciously polarized.
It's hard to turn on a televised major sporting event without bumping into an IBM Linux commercial. Our political leadership while not, in my humble opinion, collectively all that bright are certainly smart enough to understand the difference between some loser little software company from podunk Utah that's not going to be around in six months and IBM.
Is when people start counter-suing for slander, liable, defamation of character, abuse of process and anything else my lawyer could think up to throw at them. Skip RIAA and go right after the deep pockets backing them. Of course, in the process of discovery we'd need to subpoena every memo between RIAA and their member record labels we could get a judge to go along with.
But they don't want to pick on people with the means to give them a dose of their own medicine, they want ratty looking sleazebags living paycheck to paycheck. They would have a tough time putting a happy face on their tactics in front of a jury, especially if they sweep the innocent into the net and one of the innocents happens to be articulate, intelligent and wealthy.
This will go on until they finger the wrong person and lose a big counter-claim. Couple of 10 million dollar settlements will take the wind out of this sail. Actually, there's probably a better chance of that happening going this route than the old way.
What alititude would you have to park the airship? On a tether no less. If it's anything under 50,000 feet it's going to be an air hazard and subject to weather, as would anything tethered to the ground. Plus it's going to have to deal with the jet stream. Otherwise you have to reel it in every time a thunder storm blows through. Doesn't sound very reliable.
I really like it. No, it's not free, but it's super easy to install and manage. I could recommend it for small offices, no problem. Hardware detection is awesome, network detection, printer configuration, browse my shares. A breeze. I do enough configuration during the day, it was worth the money to me for a no-brainer Linux installation at home. And that's exactly what you get. One disc, in the drive, answer four or five questions and walk away. Done.
The biggest problem I've had is the sound server can't find one of the wav files for Asteroids and keeps throwing an error message when I hit something.
CrossOver will run Word, Excel and Photoshop fairly well. It won't run Premiere and haven't tried Vegas, but I'm not hopeful. Don't expect your average Winblows apps to work and you won't be disappointed.
I don't know why on earth you'd want to take nice Linux distro and crap it up with Windows programs anyway. Dual boot back to Windows...don't forget to unplug your internet connection first.:)
New computer parts: $500.00
Copy of Xandros 2.0: $89.00 (plus shipping)
Having your wife say, "Hey, this message from my cousin had some file attached to it." And being able to answer, "Don't worry about it, baby, just delete it.": Priceless
I'm not sure it's so much that they're trying to get your business as much as it may be a reaction to their customers. When a advertiser asks, "What about ad blocking software?" They need an answer. Whether it actually works or not or whether those people would buy anyway is not really material. They would likely use it as a sales tool. No one can block our ads! When the truth is they'll be able to say that honestly for about a day. As long as it takes some of you to figure out how they're doing it, how to block it and post the solution on/.
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I won't repeat the previous advice, which is very good, but will add this suggestion. You always have the option to have them contract for your service with your own company. In some cases that will even save them money because they don't have to handle your taxes. It's not that expensive to run your own company or straight 1099. You need professional liability insurance, about 300-400 a year last time I priced it. An LLC is nice, but ask a lawyer because it's not always as much protection for a sole proprietor as it is for partnerships. And a DBA (Doing Business As) bank account. Then you can negotiate as a vendor and not as an employee. It gives them some advantages and you a lot of them. Depending on where you live and local ordinances. But most cities and counties have some kind of program for small businesses. And you'll need a tax guy for handling your quarterly tax payments, license fees and health insurance.
Figure your hourly rate on the salary they were offering plus 30%. You won't clear as much, but you'll be a lot happier.
What they won't like is if you're there for 10 hours you can bill them for 10 hours. They can't soak any extra work out of you. The flip side of that coin is they can work you for 90 hours a week and not pay any overtime.
A bad day working for yourself is better than the best day you'll have as an employee. And at-will employment is pretty much zero protection for you. Strangely your vendor contract will usually be written by you and will be a lot less complicated than the crap they want you to sign as an employee. Basically this is work for hire, what they pay for is what they own. And you can negotiate to use your own equipment and work off-site some days.
The downside to this is a lot of companies like having employees under their thumb and it will be entirely obvious that you are not. But they'll shrug if off with, "Oh, he's a contractor and doesn't have to do..." whatever.
I'm not entirely sure I want to know the answer and it's almost positive I'm not going to like it.
All you that had your jobs shipped out from under you to India, Forbes thinks you're dead wood. Talk about kicking someone when they're down.
Insignificant to who? I don't know what kind of business you have, but to a lot of us those license costs are absolutely f'ing insane. I can take the money I would've spent on one copy of XP and pay for web hosting for a year. For the cost of one copy of Office I can build a really decent PC or buy a monitor. For the cost of MS Small Business Server I could build a network storage device.
I'm glad your business is so flush with cash that you can squander it on MS licenses, but some of the rest of us don't have that luxury.
Besides, if it came down to a choice between hiring someone and paying MS, I'd opt for spending the money on a real human being opposed to a faceless corporation that doesn't give a crap about me or them.
Buy, hey, I'm glad you can lay off people without a second thought. Doesn't matter as long as you have your condo in South Beach, right? Unfortunately I think about their wives, their kids and how long they might be out of work.
I'm glad you're okay with things, because in a cynical moment I might be tempted to think you're part of what's wrong with this country.
Asshole.
The manufacturing and customer service jobs go first, then the tech jobs and it suddenly stops there. Bull-shit. After that it's accounting and HR, graphics and creative positions, account managers, sales. So, what's left? What's your next adjustment career? Anything that India and the Cheney administration are arguing for is guaranteed to be BAD for you.
And they always have been assholes to deal with, on the server and client side. You know you suck when people would rather deal with MS than you. lol. That's bad.
You can't say your Congressman's kid goes to the same schools, they don't. They go to very exclusive private schools. They have priveledged parking places, they ride in corporate jets to industry sponsored fund raisers in exotic locations, they are surrounded by people so far removed from the average American they could be from a different planet. The perks and the money start to skew their view of the world after a while. The people they socialize with, work with, and spend the most time with are not representative of your life. When I was there I called it being in the tank.
And you're definitely right about just complaining and not doing anything. You would be surprised the clout a few people working together have even in the insular world of the tank. The story I go back to is Omaha Beach in WWII.
The allied landing was going nowhere until a few survivors started going from man to man and encouraging them to just pick up a rifle and shoot back. Individually the effort was meaningless, but after a while the collective fire started to make a difference.
Don't worry about changing the world, just pick a word processor and start firing off polite and reasoned letters.
Leave it to Utah.
Man, it's expensive to be a young person these days. And I'm not even that old. Well, not compared to a tree anyway.
Seriously, as long as media companies, and I'm including music, try to avoid seeing their product as a commodity, they're going to keep coming up with brain dead ideas like this one. MS is barely getting away with it, what chance did Disney think they had?
If you jack people around on any commodity long enough and boost the price on them, they'll find ways to get by without your product and someone else will offer them better terms and eat into your market share. Movies, music and, increasingly, software are like gasoline, sugar and coffee. Inconvenient to live without, but consumers will adjust their consumption if you dick them enough.
Another classic case of the problem trying to dictate the solution.
We could shorten it to MSIE Hole or MSHole and lump them all under one general category of Suck instead of Articles. Then we could sub-divide into SCOSuck and MSSuck.
Man, I just realized how often SCO and MS are mentioned in the same context. Suck. What company they keep. And MS has nothing to blame but their own greed and avarice. At least SCO can claim too much inbreeding in Utah.
Patience. MS didn't get here overnight and they're not going away overnight. Think about the amount of institutional inertia to overcome just getting one customer switched over. Now multiply that by 95% of the desktops out there.
Change will happen-- is happening. Very deep and profound changes. Trying to stop Linux at this point is like trying to stop the tides. But even if the entire world committed to wholesale transition tomorrow it would still take years.
This probably isn't the year MS goes down, but they're definitely taking on more water than the pumps can handle. They'll go down, but over a span of years not in a year. It'll be more like peeling an onion, they'll die in layers. Little bits at a time.
I'm actually planning to enjoy watching it happen. Just because it's slow doesn't mean it won't be interesting.
ROFL! Can I borrow that line? Good one. There really is only one study that matters: The one you do in your own enterprise/office/home. Run some pilot programs. Experiment. Though I keep forgetting that most Windows admins are so busy just keeping things running they don't have time to do resource planning.
I don't particularly want to live in a craphole country lined with shanty slums.
Keep expenses at the absolute bone and don't spend any money until you have to. Even if some VC was insane enough to give you startup money, the first thing they're going to do is start whacking all the expenses you don't really need.
Do spend a couple hundred bucks on professional liability insurance. It's cheap for IT consultants.
Starting your own business on a shoestring is also a great way to hide gaps in your employment history. Especially if you have a company name to point to.
And I must inform all of you that you may be intruding on my patent for exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide across a thin, moist membrane. I'm gonna own all of you bitches!
He also talks about artists giving away their product not making any sense and DRM almost in the same breath.
Not a promising start imho.
Whoever gets there first. If you can get to it, you can have it.
Besides robot exploration software would be handy right here. It would be neat to be able to send a research bot out in the deserts, deep oceans and jungle canopies of the world. Machines can go where we can't.
Individually you can be damn annoying sometimes, but I'm constantly amazed and delighted by the collective intelligence of the /. pack.
There have always been political differences and disputes, but I never remember any time in my life that the country has been this divided and so viciously polarized.
It's hard to turn on a televised major sporting event without bumping into an IBM Linux commercial. Our political leadership while not, in my humble opinion, collectively all that bright are certainly smart enough to understand the difference between some loser little software company from podunk Utah that's not going to be around in six months and IBM.
But they don't want to pick on people with the means to give them a dose of their own medicine, they want ratty looking sleazebags living paycheck to paycheck. They would have a tough time putting a happy face on their tactics in front of a jury, especially if they sweep the innocent into the net and one of the innocents happens to be articulate, intelligent and wealthy.
This will go on until they finger the wrong person and lose a big counter-claim. Couple of 10 million dollar settlements will take the wind out of this sail. Actually, there's probably a better chance of that happening going this route than the old way.
What alititude would you have to park the airship? On a tether no less. If it's anything under 50,000 feet it's going to be an air hazard and subject to weather, as would anything tethered to the ground. Plus it's going to have to deal with the jet stream. Otherwise you have to reel it in every time a thunder storm blows through. Doesn't sound very reliable.
The biggest problem I've had is the sound server can't find one of the wav files for Asteroids and keeps throwing an error message when I hit something.
CrossOver will run Word, Excel and Photoshop fairly well. It won't run Premiere and haven't tried Vegas, but I'm not hopeful. Don't expect your average Winblows apps to work and you won't be disappointed.
I don't know why on earth you'd want to take nice Linux distro and crap it up with Windows programs anyway. Dual boot back to Windows...don't forget to unplug your internet connection first. :)
New computer parts: $500.00
Copy of Xandros 2.0: $89.00 (plus shipping)
Having your wife say, "Hey, this message from my cousin had some file attached to it." And being able to answer, "Don't worry about it, baby, just delete it.": Priceless
I'm not sure it's so much that they're trying to get your business as much as it may be a reaction to their customers. When a advertiser asks, "What about ad blocking software?" They need an answer. Whether it actually works or not or whether those people would buy anyway is not really material. They would likely use it as a sales tool. No one can block our ads! When the truth is they'll be able to say that honestly for about a day. As long as it takes some of you to figure out how they're doing it, how to block it and post the solution on /.