A corporation is creating an 'individual' under the law. The corporation must do all that an individual does. It needs to pay taxes, operate in legal manners, be responsible for various things, etc.
So the dating service, if incorporated, has the same rights as anyone.
Traditionally: vendor pays for the user to download their software
Proposed: users collectively __seem__ to pay for thr bandwidth.
Actual: Users are using their idle bandwidth in most cases, but they pay for it when their ISPs jack up prices due to increased P2P usage. The ISPs are paying for it really, and hence the users will in time pay for it.
So if coupled with lower prices, you'll just pay for it a different way... I'd rather have reliable fast downloads from a big game/movie/product company with lots of infrastructure and resources.
Personally, my wireless can't make it to the other side of the house. I've also done coroporate implementations where wireless needs to be placed a little too regularly, versus say a couple APs per hotel or large office building.
I'd rather have distance over speed... like the article a couple days about about 125mi WiFi. Has a lot more purpose, as anything important and needing the speed isn't going to be going over Wireless.
Yeah but I'd even expect them to trash the MBR and partition table... Sure the data is still there, but at least you have to go looking for it. That takes about 1/2 a second on your average PC (used to use it about 50 times a day in workstation imaging).
But yeah- personal information should probably get at least one zero.
You missed the point of that statement. I am saying that I wake up on a Saturday morning and go to bed on a saturday night (arguably sometimes slightly later). The concept of a day includes some sleep, morning, noon, evening, nighttime. A saturday is different from a friday.
What i'm suggesting is that if you woke up at 2pm on Saturday and then went to bed at 10am on Sunday (both in local time, which is then a universal time). Suddenly your 'day' isn't concrete in your mind. Your day doesn't have the order. If you move across the globe, you have to remember new time standards. If you do business around the globe you have to figure out when everyone is in the office.
The concept of a day you take for granted- ask the people who work night shifts how hard it is sometimes. Not to mention if this was the requirement to have disorder as opposed to being sleect cases.
Yeah you probably wouldn't use day names like that, but that's really the point. We're not talking about adjusting time but changing the way you think of a day in its entirety. We're talking about a shift in how we think, what we do, and the basic concepts we all grew up in. Midnight is being out late, noon is sleeping in late, etc. The concept of a Weekend locally is very important, as is the beginning and end of the day.
I'm not saying it's not possible in the least, but it changes how we think a lot more than I think the parent thought of. You're not just changing the time, but rather changing how we think of a day, week, etc.
And to what gain? Timezone's aren't that bad. They make a day a standard thing in local terms. While the avoidance of them is super for computers and international business, it sucks horribly for locals all over the world.
I'd be more concerned if they were flying planes with margins of error of less than a second.
Besides- it doesn't matter what the actual time is with technology, but rather the relative time. As long as the planes obey the same second tick, who cares.
I can see it now... the day will shift mid-day. Try programming that one! The 23rd of August (for example) will change over in the MIDDLE OF A WORKDAY! Not only that, it'll change over at a different time in the work day (so sun's position, but in your proposal not physical time) for every region.
The whole point of time zones is to keep time reasonably standard no matter where you are. I can travel half way across the world and I still wake up at 8am, eat lunch at noon, dinner at 7pm, etc. The concept of a day is very engrained in us. Today is a Saturday! Imagine if it was also sunday based on my location.
Besides- the US would want to manage it, so they'd end up with the same time scheme they have now (probably picking up EST or Mountain as their base zone), while the rest of the world rolls over laughing at their proposal.
Mars operated very nicely on its own, but I'm sure we've managed to bring the lovely disease and other fun things over there in our rovers. Time will tell, but don't you think that we aren't supposed to be there for a reason?
ActiveX provides just that- it's like running a program on your computer... and the best part is, VB made them, so any grade-A idiot could start executing filesystem functions!
Yeah- it's a very big 'can`t we all just get along' comment. I'll admit it.
I guess the comment is just trying to point out that there is no BENEFIT to not keeping to the standard and setting it. If they want to do something other than what W3c says, why not suggest it and let everyone adopt it or provide better solutions- as another pointed out, this is what w3c is for.
And you think people will listen? HA! Who cares? For the user, IE displays pages fine, so why would a user care about such technical detail of making it right? As long as 10-95% of people are using IE (yes- that means until eternity), people will make their pages compatible for it, so end users will never notice the difference, and never care what some hippie spouting open-source thinks. So no bank or major site is going to let their pages look horrible in IE due to some code changes, so they'll update it.
And M$ will say that IE is better for A B and C. And then you have a bit war. If there was a right answer, we wouldn't be having this discussion. If there was a superior OS in every way, we wouldn't need two... but each has it's advantages and market.
w3c is a group trying to set standards, but I'm not suggesting someone go in there and kick and scream until we get out way. I'm talking about the major players getting together and saying "you know what- this is stupid. Let's meet somewhere in the middle, both give in a bit, and come up with something that's better for the community as a whole".
W3c is fantastic (I'm a big fan of validating code) but there are quirks on all browsers, code tags and properties either supported only be one browser or supported differently in them all. Some 3rd party can't do this, but the developers themselves need to step in and come to agreement on how things should work.
Could you imagine POP3, telnet, and FTP protocols to be the same as the interpretation of HTML results?
mail from
Err: Microsoft SMTP requires [msmail from] [font colour="#ffffff"]
Err: Spell color like a true American in US browsers
Think of how long the misspelling of http referer has carried on?
Lets talk seriously for a moment. Why are there IE only extensions on an open standard? Why are there Mozilla-only objects, ways of doing things, formatting problems, etc?
It's because everyone is trying to stand their ground and provide something specific to their purpose.
Get Mozilla/Netscape, Opera, Microsoft, etc all in one room and decide on a standard. Everyone has to give in, nobody is right or wrong... and make it stick. -OR- if you can't, include 100% compatibility for the other person's idea.
The Internet community builds itself on respect and compromise- ensuring the most imformation and availability to the masses. Lets once and for all come up with a mediated standard and everyone agree that the Internet would be a better place if developers just had things work properly.
The browser is to be the INTERFACE to connecting to content, and hence should connect to all content and display it in the same way.
I guess I'm just tired of everyone doing their own thing.
BTW: This is different than Linux distros and other situations. I could say the same with the hundreds of Linux distributions, but each of those have different target markets. In contrast, the browser is intended for anyone, and the CONTENT is what has the target market.. The content should always display and work the same. Everyone give in a little.
The purpose of SS is, yes speed. But there is another side.
Suddenly you don't have a platter spinning at 7200-15000 RPM inside your case. Plus you don't have the moving parts inside the drive to fail (good for anything more 'mission critial'). Also not being as touchy to magnets and other elements makes them great for embedded devices and specialized areas. Also, the temperature range is higher due to the lack of moving parts, making it a lot easier than spinning up a platter in the arctic.
I'm saying there are tons of benefits beyond speed. Lets be realistic- with systems coming with 1G+ of RAM, once you load up the data it's not _that_ big of a deal in most cases. Drives are fast. Anyone who's ever hibernated their system with a gig of RAM knows that it coming back up in 2-5 seconds is pretty darn good.
Can't wait for SS storage. Right now this will allow computers in the arctic and facing the elements to work more reliabily- Koisks to work with fewer failure rates, etc.
So yes- I'd buy a 4GB drive for $100 bucks given the need for it. It's not quite there for my HTPC though to keep it quiet- need about 100x more space.
PS: There is minimal benefit to having it _AND_ magnetic media, as you might as well just load it up with RAM. Still have the noise- still have the failure rates. Meh.
It's the question of the dumb patents. The fact that these things have been in computing environments for tens of years and yet this is suddenly somehting they decide to patent.
That says that they look for things that aren't patented and patent them as a money-grab. Contrast that to how patents should be: coming up with a genius idea after years od development and protecting your investment.
It's not a genius idea, they didn't come up with it, and it's stupid to patent. In the same way that RollerBlade is now the common word for 'inline-skate', it's used everywhere and shouldn't have rights given to one company.
Re: letting employees go Sometimes small businesses are the *worst* at that, too.
Well small businesses usually run a tight ship. This is mainly because the owners are close to the action and the fact that money wasted has a direct conseqence.
While M$ may not notice if.1 of those 39 billion disappear, a small business keeping you for an extra few weeks at a cost of $10,000 when you're not bringing in revenue means money that the investors (usually owners) don't take home at the end of the day in paycheques, dividends, or opportunity to reinvest money. Now this is the same for businesses, but it's harder with the small.
Second, while billg@microsoft.com may not know who their employees are when you're one of many tens of thousands, you sure do notice when your five-man op has a defunct process.
Now this of course assumes no benefit for the company to keep the employee, however in contrast, small business also usually has many more connections and I'd say more loyalty. Employees know that the company doing well keeps them employed. The employee knows that being 1/10th or 1/20th of the output means (s)he makes a difference. The employee's probably had a few beers and maybe a steak with the employer. They employee probably has extra hockey/football/baseball/basketball tickets thrown at them a few times a year (at least my employees do) both to take their own friends and to go with other co-workers and/or clients.
I'd argue that there is much _more_ loyalty to small businesses where the boss brings you in and talks to you rather than has a HR manager make a pink piece of paper for you.
Don't see nearly as much of that here in southern Ontario (Canada) mainly because a good majority of the population if black, chinese, and all of the others out there. Diversity has become the norm.
I wasn't going as far as that statement in my comment though. I'm all for equal rights, however equal rights doesn't always mean equal rewards. I'm a strong believer in evaluating all employees equally and fairly. Especially in the technology industry, it doesn't matter if you're disabled, male, female, etc.
If you have the knowledge and a fairly good grasp of English (we do deal with customers all day), then you're evaluated fairly with all others. The difficulty that you have is where employers feel they _have_ to hire a disabled person or woman, despite (in the example) being the poorer candidate for the job. EQUALITY is equal in opportunity. A female worker in my job should be paid the same, however my job shouldn't be given to a female simply because of her sex.
Read again. I compared being forced to accept UNREASONABLE conditions in order to be able to get a job to slavery. Not every non compete clause is unreasonable, quite a few are however. I was not in any way comparing the clause itself with slavery.
I'd doubt most would consider a high-paid executive not working for six months in a directly related company to be unreasonable. There's nothing stopping him from taking his management skills, but just not for another search/os/office products company.
So put him on payed leave for 3-6 months.
Okay- then take a salary cut for the time that you are there. It all works out in the end to be the same. If you are signing a contract that will mean less money for 6 months after, there better be a signing bonus or a higher pay throughout the time. When you are comparing jobs you, in the same way, take into account your signing bonus, parting settlement, medical/health plan, dental plan, and other extras. In the same way, two jobs pay the same but one prevents you from working for a few months- they (may) not be equal and are compared as such. You know what you're getting into when you sign it and you have all the information. There is no 'victim' here- "Ooooh poor me- I signed an agreement that doesn't work to my benefit". Negotiate the time down if you want. It's different ways of saying the same thing. He is going to get compensated for the time at the company, so why shift the money until after he is no longer providing a revenue to the company? Learn to money-manage.
Nope, and I'm not sre if it is such a big issue in this specific case.
We're not talking a line employee living paycheck-to-paycheck who isn't allowed to work in another factory. We're talking about soemone (lets guess) paid a few hundred grand a year who signed into an agreement knowing very-well the clauses in it. I'm not saying we should base labour laws on the money one makes, but what I am saying is that he's not a victim _FORCED_ to take a job with poor M$ because his kids are starving. He read the contract and signed it, agreeing to its contents. Then google picks him up- he's clearly in high demand and tried to pull a fast one and scoop up an opportunity.
I understand perfectly well why they are there, but I give priority to what is good for the large majority of people over what is good for a tiny fraction of them. If companies wan't to prevent peopel from leaving, they better make sure they offer the best conditions possibel to their employees instead of using clauses that are generally bad for the employees.
That's the thing. They're not trying to prevent them from leaving. Go leave- do what makes you happy- they are not protecting their investment in the person, but instead protecting their investment in their own operations and the industry secrets that person may know.
While a people-sentric employers-are-bad view has it's plusses, don't forget that these companies are the ones who pump money to consumers, investors, etc and buy services from other businesses. It's not just a place to get money, but a valued member of the economy. If you make it more expensive for a company to operate by adding bogus labour laws, you'll find prices go up, employee salaries go down, and the number of people employed in the end goes down- how is that good?
No need to tell me, I have worked for the last 2 decades, of which 11 years was spent at IBM. I kow all about the 'scoial landscape' and such it provides for.
No kidding- I left IBM after five years, though that was about ten years ago.
THe micro conomical side of this is extremely obvious. I do believe you should consider that there are more important things then the micro economics of a single company, and that in the end the
You're comparing a non-competition clause preventing you from working for a direct competitor (hence in the same industry) to slavery? You have got to be kidding me? In his position, he is privy to knowledge of the operations and the products that will be released within the next few months- the idea is that he can't spread that knowledge as easily. He's probably under an NDA, but it prevents slip-ups and conflicts of interest.
Plus we're talking about an exec ( a VP in fact ), who is probably making some damn fine money in compensation for 6 months of not working for a direct competitor. That's not a bad deal.
There are employers who do NOT have these requirements. If you are against them, simply only apply to those employers. It is the companies protecting themselves from employees who run off and start competing with themselves.
A job is not just something you do all day to make money- for many it's genuinely something that we enjoy, a social landscape, a position in life, and more.
Those who know economics: it's "a barrier to entry and exit" to discourage you from leaving or joining other companies quickly while the information you have is still current and can be used against the company in question.
Seriously, how can a contract clause saying "when you quit you can not work in this industry for x months" be legal? Isn't that a serious hole in basic worker rights?
Why? You say "we're willing to hire you but under this condition" (similar to NDAs and other conditions that you are given these days). You as an employee have a choice- choose whether you want to be bound by this agreement. Nobody is forcing you to accept this position- nobody is forcing you to agree to these terms.
You can make almost any agreement you want. There are of course limitations to prevent people from taking it too far (criminal interest rates >60% per year, time limitations for legal action after a contract, etc) but it's up to the people signing to read, understand, and agree.
Employee laws have been shifted so far from out of the _employers_ control that employers can't do ANYTHING these days, such as lay off employees with good reason without good worry and checking with lawyers. It's a joke.
It's a choice you have ultimately. Of course, a smart employee will ensure they are compensated either with a slightly higher salary over their work there or by a parting settlement to keep the money rolling in for that few months.
Slashdot Mirror
A corporation is creating an 'individual' under the law. The corporation must do all that an individual does. It needs to pay taxes, operate in legal manners, be responsible for various things, etc.
So the dating service, if incorporated, has the same rights as anyone.
-M
It just transfers the cost around.
Traditionally: vendor pays for the user to download their software
Proposed: users collectively __seem__ to pay for thr bandwidth.
Actual: Users are using their idle bandwidth in most cases, but they pay for it when their ISPs jack up prices due to increased P2P usage. The ISPs are paying for it really, and hence the users will in time pay for it.
So if coupled with lower prices, you'll just pay for it a different way... I'd rather have reliable fast downloads from a big game/movie/product company with lots of infrastructure and resources.
-M
Personally, my wireless can't make it to the other side of the house. I've also done coroporate implementations where wireless needs to be placed a little too regularly, versus say a couple APs per hotel or large office building.
Distance is key- as long as it's adjustable.
-M
I'd rather have distance over speed... like the article a couple days about about 125mi WiFi. Has a lot more purpose, as anything important and needing the speed isn't going to be going over Wireless.
-M
Yeah but I'd even expect them to trash the MBR and partition table... Sure the data is still there, but at least you have to go looking for it. That takes about 1/2 a second on your average PC (used to use it about 50 times a day in workstation imaging).
But yeah- personal information should probably get at least one zero.
-M
Isn't the whole point of a video game console to have standardized hardware?
Otherwise if the parts are continually different and developers need to consider that, isn't it no different from a PC?
-M
You missed the point of that statement. I am saying that I wake up on a Saturday morning and go to bed on a saturday night (arguably sometimes slightly later). The concept of a day includes some sleep, morning, noon, evening, nighttime. A saturday is different from a friday.
What i'm suggesting is that if you woke up at 2pm on Saturday and then went to bed at 10am on Sunday (both in local time, which is then a universal time). Suddenly your 'day' isn't concrete in your mind. Your day doesn't have the order. If you move across the globe, you have to remember new time standards. If you do business around the globe you have to figure out when everyone is in the office.
The concept of a day you take for granted- ask the people who work night shifts how hard it is sometimes. Not to mention if this was the requirement to have disorder as opposed to being sleect cases.
-M
PEAR::DB encourages $db->quoteSmart(...) that will properly quote it with the database-specific escaping.
Plus teach a newbie to use sprintf when making their SQL and you'll find that it's a lot easier to remember that.
magic quotes should always be disabled. The language shouldn't make up for the lack of information the developer has.
-M
Look into Smarty and other great PHP template engines. They make that separation for you.
Otherwise HEREDOC's help a lot in large blocks of easily updatable code.
-M
Yeah you probably wouldn't use day names like that, but that's really the point. We're not talking about adjusting time but changing the way you think of a day in its entirety. We're talking about a shift in how we think, what we do, and the basic concepts we all grew up in. Midnight is being out late, noon is sleeping in late, etc. The concept of a Weekend locally is very important, as is the beginning and end of the day.
I'm not saying it's not possible in the least, but it changes how we think a lot more than I think the parent thought of. You're not just changing the time, but rather changing how we think of a day, week, etc.
And to what gain? Timezone's aren't that bad. They make a day a standard thing in local terms. While the avoidance of them is super for computers and international business, it sucks horribly for locals all over the world.
-M
I'd be more concerned if they were flying planes with margins of error of less than a second.
Besides- it doesn't matter what the actual time is with technology, but rather the relative time. As long as the planes obey the same second tick, who cares.
-M
Forget time zones - no need for that either
I can see it now... the day will shift mid-day. Try programming that one! The 23rd of August (for example) will change over in the MIDDLE OF A WORKDAY! Not only that, it'll change over at a different time in the work day (so sun's position, but in your proposal not physical time) for every region.
The whole point of time zones is to keep time reasonably standard no matter where you are. I can travel half way across the world and I still wake up at 8am, eat lunch at noon, dinner at 7pm, etc. The concept of a day is very engrained in us. Today is a Saturday! Imagine if it was also sunday based on my location.
Besides- the US would want to manage it, so they'd end up with the same time scheme they have now (probably picking up EST or Mountain as their base zone), while the rest of the world rolls over laughing at their proposal.
-M
Mars operated very nicely on its own, but I'm sure we've managed to bring the lovely disease and other fun things over there in our rovers. Time will tell, but don't you think that we aren't supposed to be there for a reason?
-M
ActiveX provides just that- it's like running a program on your computer... and the best part is, VB made them, so any grade-A idiot could start executing filesystem functions!
-M
Yeah- it's a very big 'can`t we all just get along' comment. I'll admit it.
I guess the comment is just trying to point out that there is no BENEFIT to not keeping to the standard and setting it. If they want to do something other than what W3c says, why not suggest it and let everyone adopt it or provide better solutions- as another pointed out, this is what w3c is for.
And you think people will listen? HA! Who cares? For the user, IE displays pages fine, so why would a user care about such technical detail of making it right? As long as 10-95% of people are using IE (yes- that means until eternity), people will make their pages compatible for it, so end users will never notice the difference, and never care what some hippie spouting open-source thinks. So no bank or major site is going to let their pages look horrible in IE due to some code changes, so they'll update it.
And M$ will say that IE is better for A B and C. And then you have a bit war. If there was a right answer, we wouldn't be having this discussion. If there was a superior OS in every way, we wouldn't need two... but each has it's advantages and market.
-M
Not quite.
w3c is a group trying to set standards, but I'm not suggesting someone go in there and kick and scream until we get out way. I'm talking about the major players getting together and saying "you know what- this is stupid. Let's meet somewhere in the middle, both give in a bit, and come up with something that's better for the community as a whole".
W3c is fantastic (I'm a big fan of validating code) but there are quirks on all browsers, code tags and properties either supported only be one browser or supported differently in them all. Some 3rd party can't do this, but the developers themselves need to step in and come to agreement on how things should work.
Could you imagine POP3, telnet, and FTP protocols to be the same as the interpretation of HTML results?
mail from
Err: Microsoft SMTP requires [msmail from]
[font colour="#ffffff"]
Err: Spell color like a true American in US browsers
Think of how long the misspelling of http referer has carried on?
-M
Lets talk seriously for a moment. Why are there IE only extensions on an open standard? Why are there Mozilla-only objects, ways of doing things, formatting problems, etc?
It's because everyone is trying to stand their ground and provide something specific to their purpose.
Get Mozilla/Netscape, Opera, Microsoft, etc all in one room and decide on a standard. Everyone has to give in, nobody is right or wrong... and make it stick. -OR- if you can't, include 100% compatibility for the other person's idea.
The Internet community builds itself on respect and compromise- ensuring the most imformation and availability to the masses. Lets once and for all come up with a mediated standard and everyone agree that the Internet would be a better place if developers just had things work properly.
The browser is to be the INTERFACE to connecting to content, and hence should connect to all content and display it in the same way.
I guess I'm just tired of everyone doing their own thing.
BTW: This is different than Linux distros and other situations. I could say the same with the hundreds of Linux distributions, but each of those have different target markets. In contrast, the browser is intended for anyone, and the CONTENT is what has the target market.. The content should always display and work the same. Everyone give in a little.
-M
The purpose of SS is, yes speed. But there is another side.
Suddenly you don't have a platter spinning at 7200-15000 RPM inside your case. Plus you don't have the moving parts inside the drive to fail (good for anything more 'mission critial'). Also not being as touchy to magnets and other elements makes them great for embedded devices and specialized areas. Also, the temperature range is higher due to the lack of moving parts, making it a lot easier than spinning up a platter in the arctic.
I'm saying there are tons of benefits beyond speed. Lets be realistic- with systems coming with 1G+ of RAM, once you load up the data it's not _that_ big of a deal in most cases. Drives are fast. Anyone who's ever hibernated their system with a gig of RAM knows that it coming back up in 2-5 seconds is pretty darn good.
Can't wait for SS storage. Right now this will allow computers in the arctic and facing the elements to work more reliabily- Koisks to work with fewer failure rates, etc.
So yes- I'd buy a 4GB drive for $100 bucks given the need for it. It's not quite there for my HTPC though to keep it quiet- need about 100x more space.
PS: There is minimal benefit to having it _AND_ magnetic media, as you might as well just load it up with RAM. Still have the noise- still have the failure rates. Meh.
-M
It's the question of the dumb patents. The fact that these things have been in computing environments for tens of years and yet this is suddenly somehting they decide to patent.
That says that they look for things that aren't patented and patent them as a money-grab. Contrast that to how patents should be: coming up with a genius idea after years od development and protecting your investment.
It's not a genius idea, they didn't come up with it, and it's stupid to patent. In the same way that RollerBlade is now the common word for 'inline-skate', it's used everywhere and shouldn't have rights given to one company.
-M
Well small businesses usually run a tight ship. This is mainly because the owners are close to the action and the fact that money wasted has a direct conseqence.
While M$ may not notice if
Second, while billg@microsoft.com may not know who their employees are when you're one of many tens of thousands, you sure do notice when your five-man op has a defunct process.
Now this of course assumes no benefit for the company to keep the employee, however in contrast, small business also usually has many more connections and I'd say more loyalty. Employees know that the company doing well keeps them employed. The employee knows that being 1/10th or 1/20th of the output means (s)he makes a difference. The employee's probably had a few beers and maybe a steak with the employer. They employee probably has extra hockey/football/baseball/basketball tickets thrown at them a few times a year (at least my employees do) both to take their own friends and to go with other co-workers and/or clients.
I'd argue that there is much _more_ loyalty to small businesses where the boss brings you in and talks to you rather than has a HR manager make a pink piece of paper for you.
-M
Don't see nearly as much of that here in southern Ontario (Canada) mainly because a good majority of the population if black, chinese, and all of the others out there. Diversity has become the norm.
I wasn't going as far as that statement in my comment though. I'm all for equal rights, however equal rights doesn't always mean equal rewards. I'm a strong believer in evaluating all employees equally and fairly. Especially in the technology industry, it doesn't matter if you're disabled, male, female, etc.
If you have the knowledge and a fairly good grasp of English (we do deal with customers all day), then you're evaluated fairly with all others. The difficulty that you have is where employers feel they _have_ to hire a disabled person or woman, despite (in the example) being the poorer candidate for the job. EQUALITY is equal in opportunity. A female worker in my job should be paid the same, however my job shouldn't be given to a female simply because of her sex.
-M
I'd doubt most would consider a high-paid executive not working for six months in a directly related company to be unreasonable. There's nothing stopping him from taking his management skills, but just not for another search/os/office products company.
Okay- then take a salary cut for the time that you are there. It all works out in the end to be the same. If you are signing a contract that will mean less money for 6 months after, there better be a signing bonus or a higher pay throughout the time. When you are comparing jobs you, in the same way, take into account your signing bonus, parting settlement, medical/health plan, dental plan, and other extras. In the same way, two jobs pay the same but one prevents you from working for a few months- they (may) not be equal and are compared as such. You know what you're getting into when you sign it and you have all the information. There is no 'victim' here- "Ooooh poor me- I signed an agreement that doesn't work to my benefit". Negotiate the time down if you want. It's different ways of saying the same thing. He is going to get compensated for the time at the company, so why shift the money until after he is no longer providing a revenue to the company? Learn to money-manage.
We're not talking a line employee living paycheck-to-paycheck who isn't allowed to work in another factory. We're talking about soemone (lets guess) paid a few hundred grand a year who signed into an agreement knowing very-well the clauses in it. I'm not saying we should base labour laws on the money one makes, but what I am saying is that he's not a victim _FORCED_ to take a job with poor M$ because his kids are starving. He read the contract and signed it, agreeing to its contents. Then google picks him up- he's clearly in high demand and tried to pull a fast one and scoop up an opportunity.
That's the thing. They're not trying to prevent them from leaving. Go leave- do what makes you happy- they are not protecting their investment in the person, but instead protecting their investment in their own operations and the industry secrets that person may know.
While a people-sentric employers-are-bad view has it's plusses, don't forget that these companies are the ones who pump money to consumers, investors, etc and buy services from other businesses. It's not just a place to get money, but a valued member of the economy. If you make it more expensive for a company to operate by adding bogus labour laws, you'll find prices go up, employee salaries go down, and the number of people employed in the end goes down- how is that good?
No kidding- I left IBM after five years, though that was about ten years ago.
You're comparing a non-competition clause preventing you from working for a direct competitor (hence in the same industry) to slavery? You have got to be kidding me? In his position, he is privy to knowledge of the operations and the products that will be released within the next few months- the idea is that he can't spread that knowledge as easily. He's probably under an NDA, but it prevents slip-ups and conflicts of interest.
Plus we're talking about an exec ( a VP in fact ), who is probably making some damn fine money in compensation for 6 months of not working for a direct competitor. That's not a bad deal.
There are employers who do NOT have these requirements. If you are against them, simply only apply to those employers. It is the companies protecting themselves from employees who run off and start competing with themselves.
A job is not just something you do all day to make money- for many it's genuinely something that we enjoy, a social landscape, a position in life, and more.
Those who know economics: it's "a barrier to entry and exit" to discourage you from leaving or joining other companies quickly while the information you have is still current and can be used against the company in question.
-M
Why? You say "we're willing to hire you but under this condition" (similar to NDAs and other conditions that you are given these days). You as an employee have a choice- choose whether you want to be bound by this agreement. Nobody is forcing you to accept this position- nobody is forcing you to agree to these terms.
You can make almost any agreement you want. There are of course limitations to prevent people from taking it too far (criminal interest rates >60% per year, time limitations for legal action after a contract, etc) but it's up to the people signing to read, understand, and agree.
Employee laws have been shifted so far from out of the _employers_ control that employers can't do ANYTHING these days, such as lay off employees with good reason without good worry and checking with lawyers. It's a joke.
It's a choice you have ultimately. Of course, a smart employee will ensure they are compensated either with a slightly higher salary over their work there or by a parting settlement to keep the money rolling in for that few months.
-M
And IBM's school offering in North America is called 'SchoolVista' (Novell) or the newer 'StudeNTVista' (NT based). So what? Vista is a common word.
1 : a distant view through or along an avenue or opening : PROSPECT
2 : an extensive mental view (as over a stretch of time or a series of events)
-M