"No matter what the provocation, I never fire a man who is honestly trying to deliver a job. Few workers who become established at the Disney Studio ever leave voluntarily or otherwise, and many have been on the payroll all their working lives."
But your solution, making employment an entitlement, is even further out past the fringe of reason.
I never said it should be an entitlement. Why did AOL hire them in the first place if they didn't need 950 employees? Being an employer carries a responsibility.
Did you want AOL to provide "make work" employment for these people?
Better than throwing them into the street after mortgages were signed.
If you apply to any job without having at least one other person proof it, you're insane.
I wrote resumes, applied for jobs and got hired without anyone proofreading the resumes. Both the spelling and grammar were perfect in the first draft each time.
Of course, I know how to read and write. That didn't help me keep the jobs, of course, because firing people for no reason (see the recent AOL story for an example) apparently doesn't require competency with the written word.
The emphasis on correct spelling and grammar is not emphasized because it has immense value to society, but rather because it is a popular status symbol.
Wearing a tuxedo to a marriage is not emphasized because it has immense value to society, but rather because it shows a reverence and respect for the event.
With most of the layoffs coming from the Northern Virginia offices, what are their hopes for finding new jobs?
What's the point? 950 regular employees were just laid off for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON WHATSOEVER. What's going to stop the next employer from doing the same thing? What is the point of trying to build a career that can be stolen arbitrarily?
The economy is doing VERY well. AOL is not about to go out of business. They still have millions of subscribers and they are probably earning about $40M a month in subscriber revenue. If the company were about to go out of business, that would be one thing. This is just arbitrary.
It is standard corporate thinking. Just pick 1200 people and fire them. Who the fuck cares if they have mortgages? That's their problem. Short-term money grab thinking.
Disney did the same thing earlier this year. In fact, they fired an ENTIRE STUDIO that was directly responsible for NINE FIGURES in top-line revenue. Why? Because they felt like it.
This is no different. W-4 employment is a sham. No business would ever depend on a similar agreement for anything, especially anything upon which revenue depends. W-4 employment is unfair and obsolete, and layoffs like these are cruel, groundless and destructive.
This is what happens when you allow your HR department to show nothing but contempt for education. Once again, short term thinking and money grab office politics is a FAILURE and it is YOUR FAULT Mr. Middle Manager. YOU are to blame. YOU were WRONG.
That needs to be emphasized because middle managers aren't often told they were WRONG.
Once again we're reminded of the timeless wisdom of the Breakfast Club:
"Without trigonometry there'd be no engineering."
"Without lamps, there would be no light."
And so it is with our current obsessive contempt for education in any form except buzzwords and MBAs. Reading and Writing is sort of important. JUST as important as Arithmetic. In fact, MORE important because without reading and writing it would be impossible to even explain mathematics, or anything else for that matter.
The written word is the basis for the entirety of civilization. Without the written word we would still be wandering around looking for food for a living. Being able to write well and comprehend what is read is a very important job skill. In fact, it is the most important job skill. All of the bullshit you shovel so you can stuff your pockets faster has to be WRITTEN by someone who can SPELL and form SENTENCES and PARAGRAPHS. In other words, you need to hire WRITERS in addition to team players.
So, Mr. functionally illiterate middle manager, the next time you're interviewing an English or Literature major for WHATEVER JOB, please be reminded that an English or Literature major was probably responsible for your ability to sort-of read the resume you're about to throw in the trash.
Have a nice day.
Re:Outsourcing made simple
on
Offshoring IT
·
· Score: 1
Outsourcing just moves a little wealth back to the developing countries.
As slowly as possible. It would take the average factory worker 800 years wages to afford the products they are making.
Re:Outsourcing made simple
on
Offshoring IT
·
· Score: 1
Let the third world enter the industrial age, I say, its about time.
Yeah, at the exact same 1890 wages. About $0.13 an hour.
Money.
Grab.
Re:Outsourcing made simple
on
Offshoring IT
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Discouraging trade to the benefit of a small minority of people (those who will lose their job to outsourcing) while hurting the vast majority of people (those who will receive the outsourced jobs and the consumers that will receive the products produced with more cost effiecent labor) is a recipe for disaster.
Fucking over gainfully employed, highly educated people for a short term money grab is a bigger recipe for disaster. This not only works at all levels of economics, but at all levels of politics too.
"Critical failure" is very generous. Wailing sobbing nightmarish failure is probably more accurate.
A worse movie would be very difficult to find. Amazing how they can green light that shit while Miyazaki-sensei's movies are in only 19 theaters, their relationship with Pixar is circling the bowl and they are firing all their animators.
Multiple narrators are a very common device in first-person novels.
Multiple narrators makes it third person with various people talking about themselves. First person is just that: One person telling a story from their own point of view. The only way first person can be narrated is through flashback or the main character describing history within the storyline.
First person isn't much more difficult than third person.
Yes it is, that's why few people try it, and those who do usually change to third person about halfway through because it's easier.
Re:First Person Movie
on
Doom Movie Update
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It's mainly for the same reason that books aren't written in first person more often. It is very very difficult to do well.
There are a number of things an author can't write into a story without a narrator. It also limits all knowledge of the world to the interpretation of one character. Very difficult to write a good story in first person.
Now, the REAL accomplishment would be to produce the movie in second person.:)
1) Acquire creative control 2) Change everything except the name 3) Profit!
Hollywood, like all business, is only interested in brands, not products. Therefore it is only the title that matters, not the plot. Happens with nearly every adaptation of any existing book/comic book/game into a movie.
Creative people should have creative control. Irrefutable example of success: The Incredibles
Business people should not have creative control. Irrefutable example of total failure: Lion King 1 1/2
Apple would do it right. Take a simplified version of OSX on an Apple-engineered device specifically designed to read e-books, PDFs, text files, Macromedia Flash documents and word processing documents.
Give it a Firewire connection and good batteries. Sell it for about the same price as an iPod and give it an e-book reading interface as innovative as the iPod's interface for playing digital music.
Start an iTunes for e-books.
The resulting sales would dwarf those of the iPod and would totally revolutionize, again, the entire business of books.
It's the kind of thing Apple does best.
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but
on
Upbeat on E-books
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
I don't see ebooks catching on unless there's a sensible way to read them. Reading from a screen just isn't conducive to enjoyment of a book.
Ok, so we should just give up.
This comment appears every time e-books are discussed.
but you can't get a degree in Geology and expect that to put you at the top of the list of canidates for a software developer position.
There's more to a Geology degree than Geology. Of course, companies refuse to understand that, which allows them to claim degrees are worthless and stuff their pockets with the rest of their employees' wages.
Or if you want to change fields, goto DeVry and get some training in your new career field.
So companies can claim that "training in a new career field" from DeVry is more valuable than a Bachelor of Science in Geology from CalTech, right? That's ridiculous, but that's the way the middle managers want it. Education = worthless
Based on your posts, I'm not convinced your not part of the problem
Yeah, it's all my fault. Of course. Middle management is always blameless, therefore middle management never has to change and never has to explain why they routinely fire, lay off, or refuse to hire qualified, experienced people.
It's the company that determines whether your skills are valuable or not.
A company which has nothing but contempt for education. Sorry. If companies are allowed to claim that university degrees are obsolete, then education is worthless in the job market. Period.
We have resisted this in the past, not because we don't want to pay overtime, but because we believe that the wage and hour laws have not kept pace with the kind of work done at technology companies,
We apologize for the fact you have to spend money to make money. Unfortunately we don't have the votes to amend the Constitution so you can get something for nothing. We're sorry to hear you've decided to move overseas. As a going-away present, here's a nice 500% tariff on everything you put your logo on, including your business cards. Have a great trip!
I don't know what you have against managers, but it's obviously very personal.
It's not personal. Oh sure, I cooked dinner once (can of soup) in the dark because I had to choose between electricity or gas for the week after a particularly poorly timed management whim that I and 50 others be fired for absolutely no reason. That was job three in a series of four, none of which lasted more than eight weeks.
I ate dinner that night by the light of a streetlamp with a plastic spoon. At the time I knew eight programming languages and had years of enterprise-level development experience on three platforms. I had developed part of a 20,000-user data processing system with a 200-person team.
The following day I spent half my net worth to turn my electricity back on. I spent the first week of the next job sitting by the copy machine for hours at a time like a pet because I had no desk.
Almost every job required myself and others to deal with some liar cheat rat fuck bastard middle manager until that manager or some other liar cheat rat fuck bastard middle manager decided to fire us in as large a group as possible for no other reason than they felt like it that day. And every time they did, financial ruin followed. Again and again and again.
I spent years working in cubicles for liar cheat rat fuck bastard middle managers and I have absolutely nothing to show for it.
Absolutely.
Nothing.
A degree is supposed to be for two things: 1) It teaches you the basics of whatever career you want to be in 2) It shows your employer that you made a sacrifice to try to better yourself. Be it money, time, energy, etc. It shows commitment.
But only if it is an M.D., Law or Engineering degree. All other education is worthless to employers.
Slashdot Mirror
Walt Disney was a capitalist? Right?
"No matter what the provocation, I never fire a man who is honestly trying to deliver a job. Few workers who become established at the Disney Studio ever leave voluntarily or otherwise, and many have been on the payroll all their working lives."
--Walt Disney
But your solution, making employment an entitlement, is even further out past the fringe of reason.
I never said it should be an entitlement. Why did AOL hire them in the first place if they didn't need 950 employees? Being an employer carries a responsibility.
Did you want AOL to provide "make work" employment for these people?
Better than throwing them into the street after mortgages were signed.
If you apply to any job without having at least one other person proof it, you're insane.
I wrote resumes, applied for jobs and got hired without anyone proofreading the resumes. Both the spelling and grammar were perfect in the first draft each time.
Of course, I know how to read and write. That didn't help me keep the jobs, of course, because firing people for no reason (see the recent AOL story for an example) apparently doesn't require competency with the written word.
The emphasis on correct spelling and grammar is not emphasized because it has immense value to society, but rather because it is a popular status symbol.
Wearing a tuxedo to a marriage is not emphasized because it has immense value to society, but rather because it shows a reverence and respect for the event.
There's more to society than cash.
Didn't they have to write some sort of CV that their employers can understand?
Can their employer read?
With most of the layoffs coming from the Northern Virginia offices, what are their hopes for finding new jobs?
What's the point? 950 regular employees were just laid off for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON WHATSOEVER. What's going to stop the next employer from doing the same thing? What is the point of trying to build a career that can be stolen arbitrarily?
The economy is doing VERY well. AOL is not about to go out of business. They still have millions of subscribers and they are probably earning about $40M a month in subscriber revenue. If the company were about to go out of business, that would be one thing. This is just arbitrary.
It is standard corporate thinking. Just pick 1200 people and fire them. Who the fuck cares if they have mortgages? That's their problem. Short-term money grab thinking.
Disney did the same thing earlier this year. In fact, they fired an ENTIRE STUDIO that was directly responsible for NINE FIGURES in top-line revenue. Why? Because they felt like it.
This is no different. W-4 employment is a sham. No business would ever depend on a similar agreement for anything, especially anything upon which revenue depends. W-4 employment is unfair and obsolete, and layoffs like these are cruel, groundless and destructive.
This is what happens when you allow your HR department to show nothing but contempt for education. Once again, short term thinking and money grab office politics is a FAILURE and it is YOUR FAULT Mr. Middle Manager. YOU are to blame. YOU were WRONG.
That needs to be emphasized because middle managers aren't often told they were WRONG.
Once again we're reminded of the timeless wisdom of the Breakfast Club:
"Without trigonometry there'd be no engineering."
"Without lamps, there would be no light."
And so it is with our current obsessive contempt for education in any form except buzzwords and MBAs. Reading and Writing is sort of important. JUST as important as Arithmetic. In fact, MORE important because without reading and writing it would be impossible to even explain mathematics, or anything else for that matter.
The written word is the basis for the entirety of civilization. Without the written word we would still be wandering around looking for food for a living. Being able to write well and comprehend what is read is a very important job skill. In fact, it is the most important job skill. All of the bullshit you shovel so you can stuff your pockets faster has to be WRITTEN by someone who can SPELL and form SENTENCES and PARAGRAPHS. In other words, you need to hire WRITERS in addition to team players.
So, Mr. functionally illiterate middle manager, the next time you're interviewing an English or Literature major for WHATEVER JOB, please be reminded that an English or Literature major was probably responsible for your ability to sort-of read the resume you're about to throw in the trash.
Have a nice day.
Outsourcing just moves a little wealth back to the developing countries.
As slowly as possible. It would take the average factory worker 800 years wages to afford the products they are making.
Let the third world enter the industrial age, I say, its about time.
Yeah, at the exact same 1890 wages. About $0.13 an hour.
Money.
Grab.
Discouraging trade to the benefit of a small minority of people (those who will lose their job to outsourcing) while hurting the vast majority of people (those who will receive the outsourced jobs and the consumers that will receive the products produced with more cost effiecent labor) is a recipe for disaster.
Fucking over gainfully employed, highly educated people for a short term money grab is a bigger recipe for disaster. This not only works at all levels of economics, but at all levels of politics too.
"Critical failure" is very generous. Wailing sobbing nightmarish failure is probably more accurate.
A worse movie would be very difficult to find. Amazing how they can green light that shit while Miyazaki-sensei's movies are in only 19 theaters, their relationship with Pixar is circling the bowl and they are firing all their animators.
Multiple narrators are a very common device in first-person novels.
Multiple narrators makes it third person with various people talking about themselves. First person is just that: One person telling a story from their own point of view. The only way first person can be narrated is through flashback or the main character describing history within the storyline.
First person isn't much more difficult than third person.
Yes it is, that's why few people try it, and those who do usually change to third person about halfway through because it's easier.
It's mainly for the same reason that books aren't written in first person more often. It is very very difficult to do well.
:)
There are a number of things an author can't write into a story without a narrator. It also limits all knowledge of the world to the interpretation of one character. Very difficult to write a good story in first person.
Now, the REAL accomplishment would be to produce the movie in second person.
For any Hollywood executive:
1) Acquire creative control
2) Change everything except the name
3) Profit!
Hollywood, like all business, is only interested in brands, not products. Therefore it is only the title that matters, not the plot.
Happens with nearly every adaptation of any existing book/comic book/game into a movie.
Creative people should have creative control. Irrefutable example of success: The Incredibles
Business people should not have creative control. Irrefutable example of total failure: Lion King 1 1/2
Apple should invent an e-book reader.
Apple would do it right. Take a simplified version of OSX on an Apple-engineered device specifically designed to read e-books, PDFs, text files, Macromedia Flash documents and word processing documents.
Give it a Firewire connection and good batteries. Sell it for about the same price as an iPod and give it an e-book reading interface as innovative as the iPod's interface for playing digital music.
Start an iTunes for e-books.
The resulting sales would dwarf those of the iPod and would totally revolutionize, again, the entire business of books.
It's the kind of thing Apple does best.
I don't see ebooks catching on unless there's a sensible way to read them. Reading from a screen just isn't conducive to enjoyment of a book.
Ok, so we should just give up.
This comment appears every time e-books are discussed.
but you can't get a degree in Geology and expect that to put you at the top of the list of canidates for a software developer position.
There's more to a Geology degree than Geology. Of course, companies refuse to understand that, which allows them to claim degrees are worthless and stuff their pockets with the rest of their employees' wages.
Or if you want to change fields, goto DeVry and get some training in your new career field.
So companies can claim that "training in a new career field" from DeVry is more valuable than a Bachelor of Science in Geology from CalTech, right? That's ridiculous, but that's the way the middle managers want it. Education = worthless
Based on your posts, I'm not convinced your not part of the problem
Yeah, it's all my fault. Of course. Middle management is always blameless, therefore middle management never has to change and never has to explain why they routinely fire, lay off, or refuse to hire qualified, experienced people.
It's the company that determines whether your skills are valuable or not.
A company which has nothing but contempt for education. Sorry. If companies are allowed to claim that university degrees are obsolete, then education is worthless in the job market. Period.
Followed by "Michael Bolton... I love his music."
To the WTO:
Knock yourself out.
-Congress
We have resisted this in the past, not because we don't want to pay overtime, but because we believe that the wage and hour laws have not kept pace with the kind of work done at technology companies,
It's someone else's fault.
To all managers of EA:
We apologize for the fact you have to spend money to make money. Unfortunately we don't have the votes to amend the Constitution so you can get something for nothing. We're sorry to hear you've decided to move overseas. As a going-away present, here's a nice 500% tariff on everything you put your logo on, including your business cards. Have a great trip!
-Congress
Buzzwords, manager-speak and bullshit.
Nothing will change.
And what if EA is truly sincere about changing? How much different from this "PR stunt" would their response be?
The changes would have happened first, instead of being "announced." Their employees shouldn't have been treated like shit in the first place.
I don't know what you have against managers, but it's obviously very personal.
It's not personal. Oh sure, I cooked dinner once (can of soup) in the dark because I had to choose between electricity or gas for the week after a particularly poorly timed management whim that I and 50 others be fired for absolutely no reason. That was job three in a series of four, none of which lasted more than eight weeks.
I ate dinner that night by the light of a streetlamp with a plastic spoon. At the time I knew eight programming languages and had years of enterprise-level development experience on three platforms. I had developed part of a 20,000-user data processing system with a 200-person team.
The following day I spent half my net worth to turn my electricity back on. I spent the first week of the next job sitting by the copy machine for hours at a time like a pet because I had no desk.
Almost every job required myself and others to deal with some liar cheat rat fuck bastard middle manager until that manager or some other liar cheat rat fuck bastard middle manager decided to fire us in as large a group as possible for no other reason than they felt like it that day. And every time they did, financial ruin followed. Again and again and again.
I spent years working in cubicles for liar cheat rat fuck bastard middle managers and I have absolutely nothing to show for it.
Absolutely.
Nothing.
A degree is supposed to be for two things:
1) It teaches you the basics of whatever career you want to be in
2) It shows your employer that you made a sacrifice to try to better yourself. Be it money, time, energy, etc. It shows commitment.
But only if it is an M.D., Law or Engineering degree. All other education is worthless to employers.