Why do people stay at jobs, or choose to switch to another job? I asked a colleague, Doug Lang, this question in 1994 when he chose to quit rather than start commuting 20 miles instead of 1 mile despite being the second highest paid employee (after the company president). He said "There are three things you get from working: money, learning and fun. Everyone decides for themselves what ratio between those three variables they want to have at any given time by either staying or leaving. If you're making a lot of money but not having fun or learning anything, maybe it's time to make less money and learn something."
Ever since, I've applied those three variables to every job I've had, and it's helped me leave boring, plateaued jobs that paid well.
Hackers and geeks are the ones who tended to not pay attention in non-interesting classes in high school, such as English and other "soft" subjects. Perhaps that explains this phenomenon. Also, IT has one of the highest percentages of non-college graduates of any of the professions, and one of the things people learn in college (at least good colleges) is how to write well.
Ah, yes, the great American megafood industry. I ate an Army MRE last year and was shocked to find that every single item in the package not only had sugar/corn syrup/yuk in it, but had about two to three times the amount reasonable and necessary.
Plus, our agricultural subsidy program has distorted markets all over the world, while lowering the price of food in America to the point where supersizing everything in your Happy Meal costs a nickel. No wonder our obesity problem is out of control.
How typical of the Europeans. They are talking about a mission that doesn't exist that may or may not include farming, yet they are choosing to waste time on telling people what they should be doing with that food.
I'm sure an EU office in Brussels will soon issue a standard or directive with a list of approved recipes for Martian cooking.
I say let the astronauts decide! Free the Martian chefs from regulation!
No, no. You should always try to find a comercially available product before custom making one (unless it's for fun or for learning something yourself)
Yes, we could all knit our own clothing and build our own houses, but specialization of labor is a basic principle of Western Civilization and ignoring it means wasting your time doing tasks it's cheaper to hire others to do. Why would anyone want to get custom-made equipment commissioned for such a clearly commercially-available product?
Also, about that wall. Unless this wall was built in a jurisdiction or country that has no uniform building code, a licensed structural or civil engineer had to run the calculations on the wall's structural properties and had to stamp the drawings. It's a nice fantasy to imagine a bunch of students created something aesthetically superior to the previous retaining wall, but they didn't; it was created by licensed, trained and experienced specialists, not a bunch of college students. They may have helped, but no professional engineer (P.E.) would risk his or her accreditation and liability insurance by allowing engineering students to be the primary creators of something as potentially dangerous as a retaining wall.
Speaking of commemorating someone while they are alive, I named a sailboat after Stallman and all his achievments last year. I emailed him for permission and got a very nice positive response back, along with a request to take him out on it the next time he is in Seattle.
Mind you, I got the boat for free with the caveat I would give it away to whoever owned it next, so it was fitting to name it after him....
Slashdot Mirror
Why do people stay at jobs, or choose to switch to another job? I asked a colleague, Doug Lang, this question in 1994 when he chose to quit rather than start commuting 20 miles instead of 1 mile despite being the second highest paid employee (after the company president). He said "There are three things you get from working: money, learning and fun. Everyone decides for themselves what ratio between those three variables they want to have at any given time by either staying or leaving. If you're making a lot of money but not having fun or learning anything, maybe it's time to make less money and learn something."
Ever since, I've applied those three variables to every job I've had, and it's helped me leave boring, plateaued jobs that paid well.
Hackers and geeks are the ones who tended to not pay attention in non-interesting classes in high school, such as English and other "soft" subjects. Perhaps that explains this phenomenon.
Also, IT has one of the highest percentages of non-college graduates of any of the professions, and one of the things people learn in college (at least good colleges) is how to write well.
Yeah, that's the pseudogeek equivalent of a guy in a jacked-up rusty pickup truck shouting "Hey, y'all, watch this!"
Plus, our agricultural subsidy program has distorted markets all over the world, while lowering the price of food in America to the point where supersizing everything in your Happy Meal costs a nickel. No wonder our obesity problem is out of control.
How typical of the Europeans. They are talking about a mission that doesn't exist that may or may not include farming, yet they are choosing to waste time on telling people what they should be doing with that food. I'm sure an EU office in Brussels will soon issue a standard or directive with a list of approved recipes for Martian cooking. I say let the astronauts decide! Free the Martian chefs from regulation!
No, no. You should always try to find a comercially available product before custom making one (unless it's for fun or for learning something yourself) Yes, we could all knit our own clothing and build our own houses, but specialization of labor is a basic principle of Western Civilization and ignoring it means wasting your time doing tasks it's cheaper to hire others to do. Why would anyone want to get custom-made equipment commissioned for such a clearly commercially-available product? Also, about that wall. Unless this wall was built in a jurisdiction or country that has no uniform building code, a licensed structural or civil engineer had to run the calculations on the wall's structural properties and had to stamp the drawings. It's a nice fantasy to imagine a bunch of students created something aesthetically superior to the previous retaining wall, but they didn't; it was created by licensed, trained and experienced specialists, not a bunch of college students. They may have helped, but no professional engineer (P.E.) would risk his or her accreditation and liability insurance by allowing engineering students to be the primary creators of something as potentially dangerous as a retaining wall.
Speaking of commemorating someone while they are alive, I named a sailboat after Stallman and all his achievments last year. I emailed him for permission and got a very nice positive response back, along with a request to take him out on it the next time he is in Seattle. Mind you, I got the boat for free with the caveat I would give it away to whoever owned it next, so it was fitting to name it after him....
So how many of us clicked, looked at the girl for 1.5 seconds, then looked at the case for four times longer? I certainly did.