That same money? You mean the money that the socialist did not work for? The problem here illustrates the sense of entitlement socialism breeds - they want the world but someone else has to provide it to them.
It has nothing to do with motive, it has to do with effect. If it benefits mankind it qualifies. Who cares if the person profits from it at the same time? Would you begrudge someone recognition just because it profits them in some way?
That's a sure way to cut back on advancement several tens of years or more.
Many on here would. It reminds me of a saying: a capitalist and a socialist are walking down the street and a man drives past in his Ferrari. The capitalist says "I hope one day I have a Ferrari like him", the socialist says "I hope one day he has to walk like me".
As far as reliability, purportedly the LSE had a single day of problems caused by never qualified reasons.
Purportedly a single day of problems?
The exchange shut down during a high-volume trading session. That's not purported, that's fact. What's purported is the number of times HVTs observed execution delays on the LSE at other high-volume times... and that's one reason Euronext has been claiming increasing market share from LSE.
You are yet to show the logical connection between the execution delays and.Net as a platform. You are only one step short of making a claim that some kid next door can develop a reliable large scale low latency system by themselves just because the develop on Linux. A failure of this kind is far more likely to be due to poor design, development and / or testing than it is to the platform used. Simply changing one group of low paid developers for another group on a different platform isn't going to make things better. I would have far more faith in a system developed by a team of specialists on.Net than a low paid team developing on Linux (whatever they happen to be using)
Nothing that outrageous in those claims. The larger powers have been fighting using proxy nations for quite a while now. In Central America the right wing dictatorships would be trained, armed and advised by the USA (look up School of the Americas) while the left wing dictatorships would be trained, armed and advised by the old USSR. Same happened in the Iran / Iraq war (American military advisers were assisting the Iraqis). Plenty of others. In all these conflicts the damage caused by the warring parties was magnified by the training and arming by the superpowers who were getting other people to do the fighting for them. Sounds like outsourcing the violence to me.
Troll? Hardly. I was thinking the same thing and I am sure many others were as well. Uzbl can barely be pronounced. Is this some in joke using klingon words which geeks find funny but everyone else is left staring blankly?
I'm guessing that you don't get the freedom to view and modify the OS source code? Personally that's why I pay Apple for their OS - so that they can do all the work with the OS so I can get on with work on what I am paid to do.
Exactly. There is a lot more to using an OS than 'you can get the OS for free'. To most people using a computer is like using any other tool - it is there to get a job done. Just like any other tool cost is only one factor to consider. More importantly is how well the tool does the job for which it is was purchased (or obtained for free).
Snow Leopard is for a limited set of elitists and the technically challenged with lots of money
The interesting thing is that out of the 11 OS X users I know, 8 work in IT and only 3 I would put in the technically challenged category. Yes this is anecdotal evidence based upon a tiny sample however there are very large numbers of "geeks" who use OS X.
Because "Good developers" will never be thrown into a project that is running over time and budget? Because "Good developers" will never have to work with poorly designed legacy systems? Because "Good developers" will never have deadlines moved forward for commercial reasons against all technical advice? Because "Good developers" don't have to deal with last minute change orders? Because "Good developers" review all bugs reported for every supporting application they use and even know of bugs in the supporting applications before they are reported? Because "Good developers" only ever work on projects with other "Good developers" and so never discover bugs in libraries / other code they are calling at the last minute? Because "Good developers" are never temporarily pulled off projects to work on a system crash type issue and thus have their own projects fall behind?
I could go on and on and on and on...
A "Good developer" could test their code until it is bullet proof and will still have problems if one of the supporting libraries also being developed either changes functionality or is buggy. A "Good developer" has no control over situations where the customer says "I want this change in production by tomorrow and accept the risks associated with the lack of testing".
Many of us dream of this utopian universe where none of those conditions occur and we could all be "Good developers". Until that time I, I am always wary of people claiming to be "Good developers" who never run into these problems as, with very few exceptions, they have never worked on any decently sized commercial app.
Interesting comment. I am curious (no idea if it has or hasn't been done) what would happen in a non-human-biased test. My thinking goes as follows: Over a very long time humans have developed to use utensils for their benefit. This would lead the human brain to be wired to learn how to use a utensil at an extremely fast rate (1-trial it appears for simple utensils). Any test that explicitly involves testing the ability to learn how to use a utensil is by its nature heavily biased towards humans. I would have been interested to see how the child would have fared against the ape in a maze for example - where the child and ape were both led from the entrance to the prize and then tested as to their memory to where the prize / food lay. I would hazard a guess that in this scenario, much more closely mimicking remembering where food lies in the wild, the ape would be ahead of the human as this test would be far more biased towards the ape.
Taken to the extreme - dogs are trusted to lead blind people around safely and have performed the job well for a long time. Would a 2-year old child be considered smart enough to undertake the task? I am not referring to physical ability but just the nature of the task itself.
My thinking is that in tasks requiring language or the use of utensils humans will excel well beyond animals even from a very young age. However in tasks involving interaction and responses to events in the physical world around them animals will perform a lot better.
Your post pretty much sums it up nicely. An interview is a place for both sides to determine if the other is a fit. However it is NOT a place for the candidate to conduct their own rigorous interview of the interviewers. A candidate asking about working environments can come across OK if phrased correctly, however if worded incorrectly it may come across, as you suggest, that they are not willing to work on anything that doesn't fit their exact requirements i.e. highly inflexible.
As for full names to Google... seriously WTF!?! Is this nutter going to try to hunt me down if I don't give them the job? On top of that, I generally do give my name when I enter an interview, it is up to the candidate to write it down. (If I am applying for a job and it is a panel interview I always have all the interviewers names at the top of my notepad with arrows pointing to who they are so I can ask questions directly). If I give my name at the beginning and they keep asking me for my name it shows they only listen to what they want to hear and ignore everything else
Overall in the responses so far I can see why a lot of people struggle to get work and it has nothing to do with the economy. One of my favourite questions is "why do you think you are suitable for the position? / why should we hire you?" Too many candidates will answer exclusively on what they will be getting out of the job e.g. "this job will give me experience in this area" and totally ignore what they will be offering and why they would be a good choice (the question actually gives them an excellent opportunity to sell themselves for the position if they had bothered to do any prep). There is very much an attitude of me, me, me - totally forgetting that the interview process is to find the best candidate for the job, not the interviewer trying to find out if they can get little mr / miss interviewee's personal approval for their workplace.
I have no idea why you think that asking about benefits, dress code, etc. in advance is an indication of inflexibility. Perhaps you are insane?
Look at it from an interviewers perspective. What would you make of a candidate who has dress code high on their priority list? When looking for work myself I generally don't bother asking about dress code until after an offer is made, it is the least of my concerns. Benefits is another matter altogether and ties in with pay negotiations so I see no problem in bringing that up with HR early (and if anything totally agree that at least at a base level both candidate and employer should be in the same ballpark pay wise before interviewing begins otherwise they are wasting each others time).
I always ask questions as the interview progresses, however I make sure I mention when the "do you have any questions?" comes up to mention that I have asked my questions as the interview has progressed (it is fairly obvious to anyone interviewing me that this is the case as I treat an interview as a dialogue, not an interrogation).
- There are only two things that the employer wants to know during the interview: "Can you do the job?" and "Are you going to cause trouble?". The information on your resume will answer the first. Your answers and attitude during the interview will answer the second.
Wrong. Except for basic entry level positions the resume does most definitely not answer the first one. The resume tells me, as an interviewer, that the candidate MAY be able to do the job. People forget that interviewers have all applied for many jobs themselves (chances are far more than the ones they are interviewing) and so know that a resume is just a sales brochure for the candidate, highlighting what the candidate might be able to do and hiding things they can't. The job of the interviewer is to determine where the truth actually lies. I have interviewed applicants with resumes that looked outstanding but by the end of the interview I was left thinking "wow, that was a waste of time" and others who had above average resumes who I thought would be absolutely perfect (strangely enough these guys very frequently got counter offers from the places they were currently working for).
- Once the employer has gone through the process of interviewing all of the candidates and decided that you are the best candidate, you should have already prepared a list of priorities for what you want. If you need six weeks of paid vacation per year, if you need to make a certain salary, or if you need to work a certain schedule, that is all negotiable at this point before the job is accepted. For all of the effort they have put into posting a job opening, sorting through all of the applications, spending all that time interviewing, and somehow still decided that you are the best candidate, it is not in the employer's best interest to start the whole process over because you want six weeks of vacation time instead of the normal four. Everything is negotiable.
Excellent excellent point. Unless the demands are unreasonable, everything is open for negotiation.
- Another item that should be asked is what the interviewer sees in the job. Each interview may give a different answer from HR, the department head, the department manager, and the team leader. Taking each of those into account will give a better impression of what is expected.
Again, excellent point. I have literally had 2 of my interviewers argue in front of me with respect to what exactly I would be doing in my job. HR has no clue as to what a developer does. A simple "what would my average day involve?" to the guy who will be your line manager (not HR or some higher up) will give the best response.
I like that question. I actually use it the other way around - as an interviewer the follow on question to "so tell me about yourself" is "give me a quick rundown on what a typical day was like at your last position". It gives me a good insight into what the person is like as an individual. A question like this from a candidate would show the candidate is actually interested in what life is like working in my team on a day to day basis and would be regarded highly.
Well said. Something that a lot of less experienced candidates don't realise is that coming across as desperate for work is actually a very bad look. Asking questions about the position shows that you have an understanding about the basics of what you will be expected to do. It also shows, as you said, that the candidate has actually been listening to what the interviewers have been saying. Coming in with an "I will do anything you ask me to no questions asked" attitude does not demonstrate that you actually understand the position you are applying for and has the added negative of giving the impression that you are not interested in the specific position but just want any job and will likely leave the moment the economy improves. Personally I ask my questions as the interview progresses, that way my questions can always be answered in the context that they arose. I also treat interviews as a 2-way dialogue and set the tone for the interview as early as I can (hint to new guys: just sitting there obediently nodding or shaking your head, obediently answering the question and only the question during an interview is terrible technique).
Nonsense. Working hours is a very valid question and shows that you know what you are talking about. Some workplaces have very standard hours, others you may be required to be on call, others you may have to work long hours as standard. If the answer is "standard working hours" there ends my line of questioning. You would be surprised how many times the answer is not standard working hours. This then gives me something to base my pay negotiations around. It is in nobodies interest for me to ask for a rate that assumes standard working hours, end up working much longer hours and being unhappy and leaving. If the manager has any experience they will know exactly where my question is coming from and be more than happy to respond. If they are unhappy about the question it usually means they expect to overwork and underpay their employees, in which case I don't want to work there anyway.
The interviewers may be interviewing dozens of people over a short period. They do not have the time (nor inclination) to be interviewed by all the prospective candidates. Due to the nature of many of the positions I have interviewed for one of the big ticket items I look for in a candidate is flexibility and adaptability. Not flexibility as in making them work stupid hours, flexibility as in them being able to perform on tasks that they may not have a lot of exposure to. If a candidate wants an extensive list of questions answered before they even get to the interview then I view them as a) someone who has absolutely no appreciation for what happens in the workplace i.e. they do not understand that the interviewers don't have time to answer lengthy questionairres and b) chances are they are highly inflexible. Both of these will count heavily against the candidate. Having said that, I am extremely open and honest in the interview itself as it is wasting everyones time if I lie or cover up anything. Once the first interview has taken place the candidate has shown that they are actually interested in the position and have given it consideration so I am more than happy to respond to any further questions they have from that point on.
It is odd that you were asked repeatedly about your pay expectations, usually the only people who will discuss that are HR and your line manager who has to look after his / her budget. General ballpark expectations are usually covered off upon first contact whenever I have looked for a job, and I have had positions where I have been haggling over details right up until contract sign date. You should already have an idea of what you are expecting before you hit the interview. I generally give a range of expectations with "as a baseline I am expecting $x, if I will be mentoring junior devs I expect $x + $y and if hours are non standard I expect $x + $z. Anyone half decent will have some idea of what they are worth on the market, it only takes a quick look through the online job ads to figure it out. Unfortunately it takes experience to be able to put a reasonably accurate number to y and z.
The example you present is the exact scenario that a good manager will protect you from. The best manager I have worked with had the approach that the best way to get results from those under him was to shield them from all the politics and crap that flew around above and let us do what we were best at. He knew that we would do anything humanly possible to get something done so if we said something couldn't be done it was taken that in no way, shape or form was it possible to get it done and this would then be passed up the line. Of course after a year he got booted as the sales guys didn't like a guy in management saying "no", it was much better for the guy to say yes and then if things go wrong they could put the boot into the poor devs who couldn't deliver the obscene promises that sales types make. I left shortly after as the dev chain of command locally fell under the sales director - who had absolutely zero clue about anything technical and things just became a big mess.
Good managers are a rare breed and generally don't last long as those above them aren't used to hearing that they can't get whatever they ask for.
Umm... I think you will find we are making exactly the same point, just from different angles:)
Now, for a flamewar that makes the vi v emacs, win v mac etc flamewars seem like a tea party, let's fire up the good ol' live or internet players are better debate;)
The legalities of it are just about to be tested as I believe there are already parties taking action over this. Online poker is not as black and white as other forms of online gaming and it looks like there will finally be a case to bring everything to a head and get everything sorted out in the courts.
Slashdot Mirror
That same money? You mean the money that the socialist did not work for? The problem here illustrates the sense of entitlement socialism breeds - they want the world but someone else has to provide it to them.
It has nothing to do with motive, it has to do with effect. If it benefits mankind it qualifies. Who cares if the person profits from it at the same time? Would you begrudge someone recognition just because it profits them in some way?
That's a sure way to cut back on advancement several tens of years or more.
Many on here would. It reminds me of a saying: a capitalist and a socialist are walking down the street and a man drives past in his Ferrari. The capitalist says "I hope one day I have a Ferrari like him", the socialist says "I hope one day he has to walk like me".
Purportedly a single day of problems?
The exchange shut down during a high-volume trading session. That's not purported, that's fact. What's purported is the number of times HVTs observed execution delays on the LSE at other high-volume times... and that's one reason Euronext has been claiming increasing market share from LSE.
You are yet to show the logical connection between the execution delays and .Net as a platform. You are only one step short of making a claim that some kid next door can develop a reliable large scale low latency system by themselves just because the develop on Linux. A failure of this kind is far more likely to be due to poor design, development and / or testing than it is to the platform used. Simply changing one group of low paid developers for another group on a different platform isn't going to make things better. I would have far more faith in a system developed by a team of specialists on .Net than a low paid team developing on Linux (whatever they happen to be using)
Talking to an IT crowd about good watches is like trying to hold a conversation about fine wine with the drunks at the local bar.
Nothing that outrageous in those claims. The larger powers have been fighting using proxy nations for quite a while now. In Central America the right wing dictatorships would be trained, armed and advised by the USA (look up School of the Americas) while the left wing dictatorships would be trained, armed and advised by the old USSR. Same happened in the Iran / Iraq war (American military advisers were assisting the Iraqis). Plenty of others. In all these conflicts the damage caused by the warring parties was magnified by the training and arming by the superpowers who were getting other people to do the fighting for them. Sounds like outsourcing the violence to me.
Troll? Hardly. I was thinking the same thing and I am sure many others were as well. Uzbl can barely be pronounced. Is this some in joke using klingon words which geeks find funny but everyone else is left staring blankly?
And vim is free if you have a computer to run Linux on. Otherwise it costs 1 PC worth of dollars. What a pointless comment.
I'm guessing that you don't get the freedom to view and modify the OS source code? Personally that's why I pay Apple for their OS - so that they can do all the work with the OS so I can get on with work on what I am paid to do.
Exactly. There is a lot more to using an OS than 'you can get the OS for free'. To most people using a computer is like using any other tool - it is there to get a job done. Just like any other tool cost is only one factor to consider. More importantly is how well the tool does the job for which it is was purchased (or obtained for free).
Snow Leopard is for a limited set of elitists and the technically challenged with lots of money
The interesting thing is that out of the 11 OS X users I know, 8 work in IT and only 3 I would put in the technically challenged category. Yes this is anecdotal evidence based upon a tiny sample however there are very large numbers of "geeks" who use OS X.
Because "Good developers" will never be thrown into a project that is running over time and budget?
Because "Good developers" will never have to work with poorly designed legacy systems?
Because "Good developers" will never have deadlines moved forward for commercial reasons against all technical advice?
Because "Good developers" don't have to deal with last minute change orders?
Because "Good developers" review all bugs reported for every supporting application they use and even know of bugs in the supporting applications before they are reported?
Because "Good developers" only ever work on projects with other "Good developers" and so never discover bugs in libraries / other code they are calling at the last minute?
Because "Good developers" are never temporarily pulled off projects to work on a system crash type issue and thus have their own projects fall behind?
I could go on and on and on and on...
A "Good developer" could test their code until it is bullet proof and will still have problems if one of the supporting libraries also being developed either changes functionality or is buggy. A "Good developer" has no control over situations where the customer says "I want this change in production by tomorrow and accept the risks associated with the lack of testing".
Many of us dream of this utopian universe where none of those conditions occur and we could all be "Good developers". Until that time I, I am always wary of people claiming to be "Good developers" who never run into these problems as, with very few exceptions, they have never worked on any decently sized commercial app.
Funny that - if I told my dog we were going for a drive and he ran to the pillow I would think he is pretty stupid.
Interesting comment. I am curious (no idea if it has or hasn't been done) what would happen in a non-human-biased test. My thinking goes as follows:
Over a very long time humans have developed to use utensils for their benefit. This would lead the human brain to be wired to learn how to use a utensil at an extremely fast rate (1-trial it appears for simple utensils). Any test that explicitly involves testing the ability to learn how to use a utensil is by its nature heavily biased towards humans. I would have been interested to see how the child would have fared against the ape in a maze for example - where the child and ape were both led from the entrance to the prize and then tested as to their memory to where the prize / food lay. I would hazard a guess that in this scenario, much more closely mimicking remembering where food lies in the wild, the ape would be ahead of the human as this test would be far more biased towards the ape.
Taken to the extreme - dogs are trusted to lead blind people around safely and have performed the job well for a long time. Would a 2-year old child be considered smart enough to undertake the task? I am not referring to physical ability but just the nature of the task itself.
My thinking is that in tasks requiring language or the use of utensils humans will excel well beyond animals even from a very young age. However in tasks involving interaction and responses to events in the physical world around them animals will perform a lot better.
Your post pretty much sums it up nicely. An interview is a place for both sides to determine if the other is a fit. However it is NOT a place for the candidate to conduct their own rigorous interview of the interviewers. A candidate asking about working environments can come across OK if phrased correctly, however if worded incorrectly it may come across, as you suggest, that they are not willing to work on anything that doesn't fit their exact requirements i.e. highly inflexible.
As for full names to Google... seriously WTF!?! Is this nutter going to try to hunt me down if I don't give them the job? On top of that, I generally do give my name when I enter an interview, it is up to the candidate to write it down. (If I am applying for a job and it is a panel interview I always have all the interviewers names at the top of my notepad with arrows pointing to who they are so I can ask questions directly). If I give my name at the beginning and they keep asking me for my name it shows they only listen to what they want to hear and ignore everything else
Overall in the responses so far I can see why a lot of people struggle to get work and it has nothing to do with the economy. One of my favourite questions is "why do you think you are suitable for the position? / why should we hire you?" Too many candidates will answer exclusively on what they will be getting out of the job e.g. "this job will give me experience in this area" and totally ignore what they will be offering and why they would be a good choice (the question actually gives them an excellent opportunity to sell themselves for the position if they had bothered to do any prep). There is very much an attitude of me, me, me - totally forgetting that the interview process is to find the best candidate for the job, not the interviewer trying to find out if they can get little mr / miss interviewee's personal approval for their workplace.
I have no idea why you think that asking about benefits, dress code, etc. in advance is an indication of inflexibility. Perhaps you are insane?
Look at it from an interviewers perspective. What would you make of a candidate who has dress code high on their priority list? When looking for work myself I generally don't bother asking about dress code until after an offer is made, it is the least of my concerns. Benefits is another matter altogether and ties in with pay negotiations so I see no problem in bringing that up with HR early (and if anything totally agree that at least at a base level both candidate and employer should be in the same ballpark pay wise before interviewing begins otherwise they are wasting each others time).
Love this one, and always ask it.
I always ask questions as the interview progresses, however I make sure I mention when the "do you have any questions?" comes up to mention that I have asked my questions as the interview has progressed (it is fairly obvious to anyone interviewing me that this is the case as I treat an interview as a dialogue, not an interrogation).
- There are only two things that the employer wants to know during the interview: "Can you do the job?" and "Are you going to cause trouble?". The information on your resume will answer the first. Your answers and attitude during the interview will answer the second.
Wrong. Except for basic entry level positions the resume does most definitely not answer the first one. The resume tells me, as an interviewer, that the candidate MAY be able to do the job. People forget that interviewers have all applied for many jobs themselves (chances are far more than the ones they are interviewing) and so know that a resume is just a sales brochure for the candidate, highlighting what the candidate might be able to do and hiding things they can't. The job of the interviewer is to determine where the truth actually lies. I have interviewed applicants with resumes that looked outstanding but by the end of the interview I was left thinking "wow, that was a waste of time" and others who had above average resumes who I thought would be absolutely perfect (strangely enough these guys very frequently got counter offers from the places they were currently working for).
- Once the employer has gone through the process of interviewing all of the candidates and decided that you are the best candidate, you should have already prepared a list of priorities for what you want. If you need six weeks of paid vacation per year, if you need to make a certain salary, or if you need to work a certain schedule, that is all negotiable at this point before the job is accepted. For all of the effort they have put into posting a job opening, sorting through all of the applications, spending all that time interviewing, and somehow still decided that you are the best candidate, it is not in the employer's best interest to start the whole process over because you want six weeks of vacation time instead of the normal four. Everything is negotiable.
Excellent excellent point. Unless the demands are unreasonable, everything is open for negotiation.
- Another item that should be asked is what the interviewer sees in the job. Each interview may give a different answer from HR, the department head, the department manager, and the team leader. Taking each of those into account will give a better impression of what is expected.
Again, excellent point. I have literally had 2 of my interviewers argue in front of me with respect to what exactly I would be doing in my job. HR has no clue as to what a developer does. A simple "what would my average day involve?" to the guy who will be your line manager (not HR or some higher up) will give the best response.
I like that question. I actually use it the other way around - as an interviewer the follow on question to "so tell me about yourself" is "give me a quick rundown on what a typical day was like at your last position". It gives me a good insight into what the person is like as an individual. A question like this from a candidate would show the candidate is actually interested in what life is like working in my team on a day to day basis and would be regarded highly.
Well said. Something that a lot of less experienced candidates don't realise is that coming across as desperate for work is actually a very bad look. Asking questions about the position shows that you have an understanding about the basics of what you will be expected to do. It also shows, as you said, that the candidate has actually been listening to what the interviewers have been saying. Coming in with an "I will do anything you ask me to no questions asked" attitude does not demonstrate that you actually understand the position you are applying for and has the added negative of giving the impression that you are not interested in the specific position but just want any job and will likely leave the moment the economy improves. Personally I ask my questions as the interview progresses, that way my questions can always be answered in the context that they arose. I also treat interviews as a 2-way dialogue and set the tone for the interview as early as I can (hint to new guys: just sitting there obediently nodding or shaking your head, obediently answering the question and only the question during an interview is terrible technique).
Nonsense. Working hours is a very valid question and shows that you know what you are talking about. Some workplaces have very standard hours, others you may be required to be on call, others you may have to work long hours as standard. If the answer is "standard working hours" there ends my line of questioning. You would be surprised how many times the answer is not standard working hours. This then gives me something to base my pay negotiations around. It is in nobodies interest for me to ask for a rate that assumes standard working hours, end up working much longer hours and being unhappy and leaving. If the manager has any experience they will know exactly where my question is coming from and be more than happy to respond. If they are unhappy about the question it usually means they expect to overwork and underpay their employees, in which case I don't want to work there anyway.
The interviewers may be interviewing dozens of people over a short period. They do not have the time (nor inclination) to be interviewed by all the prospective candidates. Due to the nature of many of the positions I have interviewed for one of the big ticket items I look for in a candidate is flexibility and adaptability. Not flexibility as in making them work stupid hours, flexibility as in them being able to perform on tasks that they may not have a lot of exposure to. If a candidate wants an extensive list of questions answered before they even get to the interview then I view them as a) someone who has absolutely no appreciation for what happens in the workplace i.e. they do not understand that the interviewers don't have time to answer lengthy questionairres and b) chances are they are highly inflexible. Both of these will count heavily against the candidate. Having said that, I am extremely open and honest in the interview itself as it is wasting everyones time if I lie or cover up anything. Once the first interview has taken place the candidate has shown that they are actually interested in the position and have given it consideration so I am more than happy to respond to any further questions they have from that point on.
It is odd that you were asked repeatedly about your pay expectations, usually the only people who will discuss that are HR and your line manager who has to look after his / her budget. General ballpark expectations are usually covered off upon first contact whenever I have looked for a job, and I have had positions where I have been haggling over details right up until contract sign date. You should already have an idea of what you are expecting before you hit the interview. I generally give a range of expectations with "as a baseline I am expecting $x, if I will be mentoring junior devs I expect $x + $y and if hours are non standard I expect $x + $z. Anyone half decent will have some idea of what they are worth on the market, it only takes a quick look through the online job ads to figure it out. Unfortunately it takes experience to be able to put a reasonably accurate number to y and z.
The example you present is the exact scenario that a good manager will protect you from. The best manager I have worked with had the approach that the best way to get results from those under him was to shield them from all the politics and crap that flew around above and let us do what we were best at. He knew that we would do anything humanly possible to get something done so if we said something couldn't be done it was taken that in no way, shape or form was it possible to get it done and this would then be passed up the line. Of course after a year he got booted as the sales guys didn't like a guy in management saying "no", it was much better for the guy to say yes and then if things go wrong they could put the boot into the poor devs who couldn't deliver the obscene promises that sales types make. I left shortly after as the dev chain of command locally fell under the sales director - who had absolutely zero clue about anything technical and things just became a big mess.
Good managers are a rare breed and generally don't last long as those above them aren't used to hearing that they can't get whatever they ask for.
Umm... I think you will find we are making exactly the same point, just from different angles :)
Now, for a flamewar that makes the vi v emacs, win v mac etc flamewars seem like a tea party, let's fire up the good ol' live or internet players are better debate ;)
The legalities of it are just about to be tested as I believe there are already parties taking action over this. Online poker is not as black and white as other forms of online gaming and it looks like there will finally be a case to bring everything to a head and get everything sorted out in the courts.