Man, this topic is so chock-full of good targets, er, topics, I hardly know where to begin. So here's my ramble:
My view as an employee:
As an employee, I am expected to work X hours in exchange for X dollars. Even if I am on contract, or a full-time salaried employee, that is the contract to which I agree with my employer. When my employer doesn't pay for services rendered, for what ever reason, I am owed compensation.
There are two cases of "employers not paying" that are relevant here:
My employer had terminated me/terminated my position/laid me off/etc.
My employer has no money.
I make the distinction because one case can occur independently of the other. That is, "my employer has no money and can't pay me" can happen without "I've been terminated/laid off" happening, and the converse is true (when terminated or laid off, the employer may or may not be able to pay you what ever monies are owed to you).
In the first case, you usually can, via legal action, get monies owed to you. In the second, the likelihood of seeing monies owed to you is slim to none. Why? because as an employee (unless you fall under special legislation such as WARN act, and such items), you are an unsecured creditor.
Why does this matter? Because if your company cannot afford to pay you any monies they owe you, they most likely are also having difficulty paying thier other creditors. And if some of those other creditors are secured, that means "they get first kick at the can".
Much of the hardware, software, furniture and other assets are bought with monies acquired by a loan (unless your VC is generous) or via leasing. Those financial arrangements that were made to acquire those assets are almost always secured. So your hardware loan for $300K is secured by the hardware itself. When the company has to pay other bills, aside from salaries, or has to pay up becuase of a default situation, those assets are the first thing to go... to the bank, to the landlord, and any other secured creditors. So even legal action on your part will not get you elevated to the stature of secured creditor, and you'll still be stuck at the end of the line up, waiting for your now-small amount of $ (think: cents paid out on the dollar owed). (I suppose that if a secured creditor and your former employer could prove you had company assets that were part of a security arrangement for financing, the financing company could come after you for those assets! Zoinks! Being sued by a bank? Imagine what that would do to your credit rating!) Because of these security arrangements, your employer will be loathe to actually give you any of these assets in exchange for monies owed to you - these assets already are earmarked for other secured creditors.
So what does this mean in the context of this discussion? Does this change the fact that people who are pissed about being short-changed should stop stealing? You're likely not going to get all that's owed to you. Deal with it. Then decide what's important for you. Sometimes it's better to walk away from a couple of grand, avoid the hassle and headaches and move on.
That being said, I am sympathetic to people to decide to "get creative" with their severance packages - some people cannot afford to throw away several thousand dollars.
A good essay by Good Ole' Bob Cringely on exactly this same point. He focuses on the FAA's approach to increased regulation, but I think the analogy is clear (I hope).
Yup, I too suffer from lower and mid back pain. I do a lot of exercise (I do triathlons, so I get 7 to 15 hrs a week of training meaning swimming, running, cycling and weights). I have regular visits to my physiotherapist (twice a month, more if I hurt more), I get massage therapy twice a month (more if I hurt more), I have learned to stretch, and I have increased the strenth of my core trunk muscles (using a balance ball, a medicine ball, and other such torture device - yoga and Pilates will also provide much of the same results). Strengthening your core muscles and learning how to use them will help immensely when it comes to balance, strength, and posture. All of which will make your back hurt less.
All that being said, you should:
Go to your doctor to rule out any other serious problems and/or get a full physical before you start any new exercise program
Get your workstation checked out by someone who understands ergonomics
I had my workstation set up examined by one of my employees who had back problems as well, and who has become a bit of an ergonomics expert (as a result). I changed my chair configuration, raised my monitor and got a raised foot rest (yes, I'm short). And my back is better than ever. All these good things put together are working for me. However, it will take you some serious time and investigation to find out what will work for you.
And when it comes to doctors (GPs or specialists), do your homework before you go and ASK LOTS OF QUESTIONS. You, as a patient, must take an active role in ensuring you get the best medical treatment for your condition. If you don't like the answer or explanation you get from your doctor, demand more information.
I have a comment on the rate at which your company bills you out vs. your salary.
As a founder and owner of a medium sized tech business (outsource and consulting service company), I have done the computation, and I suggest all tech workers do the same. I have to bill my staff out at double or three times their "hourly rate" (i.e.: their salary divided into the number of hours they work) just to break even. That's because on top of all my staff's salaries, I have to pay for rent, taxes (employment and corporate), benefits, hardware, software, connectivity (T1, phone, fax), furniture, security, training (each staff member gets an annual education budget), books, conferences, travel, pop, juice, tea, coffee, beer, ship-it lunches/dinners, t-shirts, monthly movies, quarterly "fun days" out of the office, newspaper deliveries... plus managers to manage all my staff...
Granted, many of these things are "perks" that I do not have to provide. But I do provide these things because employee turn-over is far, far more costly.
Contractors have to get paid at least double their counterparts "hourly salary" because they are self employed, and must pay for most of those things listed above themselves.
I hope you get the gist. At double the hourly salary, I have little to no profit margin. That means the company can't buy the SPS2 it wanted, or easily absorb a slow period (particularly true for service companies).
Cash flow is king. Without a 3 to 4 times multiplier (which is common), most service companies would fail if 2 or 3 of their big clients just held off paying for an extra 30 days).
As a Canuck with a Rogers@Home connection for the last 3 years (wow has it been that long?), my take on this is that the CRTC would like to ensure that when I pay my $50 a month, that I am paying for and receiving a quality service. Rogers@Home has serious network and traffic problems. It's not uncommon to not receive any e-mail for a week...The CRTC wants these providers to be as responsible and responsive as the phone companies are. If my phone is down/unavailable/has a crappy signal for any amount of time, and I call Telus (my phone company) about it, Telus automatically credits my account to compensate me (for example, I shouldn't have to pay for three days of unusable phone service). However, the same is not always true with Rogers@Home. When I can't surf or send/receive emails for an extended period of time, I can't call them up and say "adjust my monthly bill please".
I am a founder and principle in a company that provides qaulity assurance consulting and outsourced testing services to North American companies. And having worked with companies all over the continent, what's happening in NY is happening everywhere...
We have done a lot of work with a huge variety of companies including many dot.coms. Some of the business management and technical management practices I have personally seen have both amazed and disgusted me. New office space = party. Sure, it's great to have a party for your clients, associates and friends. But why on earth would you spend upwards of $25K on a party?!? That's 5 to 10 employee salaries for the month. Maybe that's your rent cost. How do you explain to the 7 employees you lay off next month tht you can't afford their salaries because you had a party? If the company was a brokerage firm or any other comparable service firm, would you have spent a similar amount on your opening party? Having a great culture for your employees is important, but it can't be all consuming. Your employees don't care one whit if you buy them a hot tub if it means laying a couple off next month or bleeding money until you have to lay them all off...
We have been asked by prospective clients to perform work for lower rates and pre IPO stock options. These clients have little to no money to spend on our services. One question we always ask these dot.coms when they solicit our services is "how do you make money?" If they say "banner advertising on our site" or something analagous to BS, we blow them off. Not nice to say, but we're trying to improve the quality of their products and services while growing and building our own service company, not make their bottom line for the quarter look good enough to justify buying a big screen TV and SPS2.
The technical comptence of some of the programmers and designers that work at these firms is appalling. I have met "senior internet developers" who were being billed out at over $150US/hr whose code looked like it was written by a 2nd year CompSci student. I haven't coded in over 5 years, and even I could find huge gaping holes in their stuff. I am constantly amazed that some people survive in this industry, that there isn't greater accountability. One dot.com I know who laid off some people recently, including their lead developer, were forced to hire him back on because no one could decipher his code. Amazing, but spaghetti coding is making a comeback...
A side issue: asking about hours *actually* worked compared to salary is always a good idea. I see many web dev firms that pay people a pretty good salary, give them free coffee/pop/etc., buy them meals 2-5 times a week, send them to Mexico for week-long vacations as a "bonus" for meeting deadlines but do not pay out overtime or allow people to bank their hours and take them off later. These people think "wow, I make $70K a year, and I get all this free stuff" but it's the employer who's getting the great deal here: they get you to work 18hr days 6 days a week and don't have to pay you an extra cent (or any extra related taxes).
Getting involved, either as a service provider for a dot.com, or as an employee for one, you have to be responsible for your choices. If you only care about money in the short term, then go ahead and take your chances. But don't be surprised if people can sense that you carry the negative cachet of having worked at or with a failed dot.com...
Remember that for many people, it's not about the money. It's about building something you believe in, something to which you can point and proudly say "I did that." Coolness only means so much if you disappear from the high-tech landscape after 5 years... without a trace.
I think that everyone forgets that most nations are doing the same thing. When you file your tax return(s), when you apply for unemployment insurance, when you complete census forms, when you fill out any myriad of forms at local, provincial/state, federal levels, what do you think they do with that information?
Of course they keep it. You can't seriously expect that the US doesn't have a similar set-up (granted it may be more distributed and/or more secure than our Canadian government seems to feel is adequate...), or that France doesn't keep detailed records of its citizens... It has been shown time and time again that a smart person (with some time and effort) can get your life story, including your tax returns, private health information, etc.
And this doesn't even take into account how many people go out of their way to broadcast this information to the world via the Net.
I have received so many spam mails about non-existent viruses, that I make it a practice to educate all my friends, family, staff and partners to CHECK IT OUT FIRST (i.e.: find supporting documentation on the Symantec Anti-Virus research page) before mailing everybody in their address book. The more people I point in this direction, the less spam I get about viruses. Remember the Frog game that was supposed to be a virus? I received over 150 emails about that one alone.
We have to remember that most people really don't know about such things, and honestly think they're doing everyone a favour with these email notifications. Let a person send email ad-hoc, and they'll send everything to everyone; teach them how to be responsible users and distributors of information, and the spam traffic will drop dramatically.
As a Canadian who keeps up on current events, I know that this tax was scheduled to go into effect last January (that is, Jan 1, 1999 not Jan 1, 2000). It was held back because of the public and (mostly) corporate outcry over it. Last I heard, it was being held off indefinitely. You can read about Bill C-32 here (it is an amendement to the Copyright Act). The bill did pass, and is legislation, but has not been implemented (as such that a consumer would notice any price differences).
This tax would extend to cover allrecordable media (audio cassette tapes, CDs, video tapes, etc - not pre-recorded media), and is designed to help reduce copyright infringement of copyrighted materials.
Slashdot Mirror
An old saying came to mind after submitting this post:
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Man, this topic is so chock-full of good targets, er, topics, I hardly know where to begin. So here's my ramble:
My view as an employee:
As an employee, I am expected to work X hours in exchange for X dollars. Even if I am on contract, or a full-time salaried employee, that is the contract to which I agree with my employer. When my employer doesn't pay for services rendered, for what ever reason, I am owed compensation.
There are two cases of "employers not paying" that are relevant here:
I make the distinction because one case can occur independently of the other. That is, "my employer has no money and can't pay me" can happen without "I've been terminated/laid off" happening, and the converse is true (when terminated or laid off, the employer may or may not be able to pay you what ever monies are owed to you).
In the first case, you usually can, via legal action, get monies owed to you. In the second, the likelihood of seeing monies owed to you is slim to none. Why? because as an employee (unless you fall under special legislation such as WARN act, and such items), you are an unsecured creditor.
Why does this matter? Because if your company cannot afford to pay you any monies they owe you, they most likely are also having difficulty paying thier other creditors. And if some of those other creditors are secured, that means "they get first kick at the can".
Much of the hardware, software, furniture and other assets are bought with monies acquired by a loan (unless your VC is generous) or via leasing. Those financial arrangements that were made to acquire those assets are almost always secured. So your hardware loan for $300K is secured by the hardware itself. When the company has to pay other bills, aside from salaries, or has to pay up becuase of a default situation, those assets are the first thing to go... to the bank, to the landlord, and any other secured creditors. So even legal action on your part will not get you elevated to the stature of secured creditor, and you'll still be stuck at the end of the line up, waiting for your now-small amount of $ (think: cents paid out on the dollar owed). (I suppose that if a secured creditor and your former employer could prove you had company assets that were part of a security arrangement for financing, the financing company could come after you for those assets! Zoinks! Being sued by a bank? Imagine what that would do to your credit rating!) Because of these security arrangements, your employer will be loathe to actually give you any of these assets in exchange for monies owed to you - these assets already are earmarked for other secured creditors.
So what does this mean in the context of this discussion? Does this change the fact that people who are pissed about being short-changed should stop stealing? You're likely not going to get all that's owed to you. Deal with it. Then decide what's important for you. Sometimes it's better to walk away from a couple of grand, avoid the hassle and headaches and move on.
That being said, I am sympathetic to people to decide to "get creative" with their severance packages - some people cannot afford to throw away several thousand dollars.
A good essay by Good Ole' Bob Cringely on exactly this same point. He focuses on the FAA's approach to increased regulation, but I think the analogy is clear (I hope).
Part right, part wrong. The 18th (next week) is Int'l peace day. Check out UN Days of the Year for Sept 2001. Minor detail, I know.
Yup, I too suffer from lower and mid back pain. I do a lot of exercise (I do triathlons, so I get 7 to 15 hrs a week of training meaning swimming, running, cycling and weights). I have regular visits to my physiotherapist (twice a month, more if I hurt more), I get massage therapy twice a month (more if I hurt more), I have learned to stretch, and I have increased the strenth of my core trunk muscles (using a balance ball, a medicine ball, and other such torture device - yoga and Pilates will also provide much of the same results). Strengthening your core muscles and learning how to use them will help immensely when it comes to balance, strength, and posture. All of which will make your back hurt less.
All that being said, you should:
I had my workstation set up examined by one of my employees who had back problems as well, and who has become a bit of an ergonomics expert (as a result). I changed my chair configuration, raised my monitor and got a raised foot rest (yes, I'm short). And my back is better than ever. All these good things put together are working for me. However, it will take you some serious time and investigation to find out what will work for you.
And when it comes to doctors (GPs or specialists), do your homework before you go and ASK LOTS OF QUESTIONS. You, as a patient, must take an active role in ensuring you get the best medical treatment for your condition. If you don't like the answer or explanation you get from your doctor, demand more information.
As a founder and owner of a medium sized tech business (outsource and consulting service company), I have done the computation, and I suggest all tech workers do the same. I have to bill my staff out at double or three times their "hourly rate" (i.e.: their salary divided into the number of hours they work) just to break even. That's because on top of all my staff's salaries, I have to pay for rent, taxes (employment and corporate), benefits, hardware, software, connectivity (T1, phone, fax), furniture, security, training (each staff member gets an annual education budget), books, conferences, travel, pop, juice, tea, coffee, beer, ship-it lunches/dinners, t-shirts, monthly movies, quarterly "fun days" out of the office, newspaper deliveries... plus managers to manage all my staff...
Granted, many of these things are "perks" that I do not have to provide. But I do provide these things because employee turn-over is far, far more costly.
Contractors have to get paid at least double their counterparts "hourly salary" because they are self employed, and must pay for most of those things listed above themselves.
I hope you get the gist. At double the hourly salary, I have little to no profit margin. That means the company can't buy the SPS2 it wanted, or easily absorb a slow period (particularly true for service companies).
Cash flow is king. Without a 3 to 4 times multiplier (which is common), most service companies would fail if 2 or 3 of their big clients just held off paying for an extra 30 days).
As a Canuck with a Rogers@Home connection for the last 3 years (wow has it been that long?), my take on this is that the CRTC would like to ensure that when I pay my $50 a month, that I am paying for and receiving a quality service. Rogers@Home has serious network and traffic problems. It's not uncommon to not receive any e-mail for a week...The CRTC wants these providers to be as responsible and responsive as the phone companies are. If my phone is down/unavailable/has a crappy signal for any amount of time, and I call Telus (my phone company) about it, Telus automatically credits my account to compensate me (for example, I shouldn't have to pay for three days of unusable phone service). However, the same is not always true with Rogers@Home. When I can't surf or send/receive emails for an extended period of time, I can't call them up and say "adjust my monthly bill please".
Oh yeah, and like you never make typos... Perhaps I was so swept up by the discussion... ;-)
I am a founder and principle in a company that provides qaulity assurance consulting and outsourced testing services to North American companies. And having worked with companies all over the continent, what's happening in NY is happening everywhere...
We have done a lot of work with a huge variety of companies including many dot.coms. Some of the business management and technical management practices I have personally seen have both amazed and disgusted me. New office space = party. Sure, it's great to have a party for your clients, associates and friends. But why on earth would you spend upwards of $25K on a party?!? That's 5 to 10 employee salaries for the month. Maybe that's your rent cost. How do you explain to the 7 employees you lay off next month tht you can't afford their salaries because you had a party? If the company was a brokerage firm or any other comparable service firm, would you have spent a similar amount on your opening party? Having a great culture for your employees is important, but it can't be all consuming. Your employees don't care one whit if you buy them a hot tub if it means laying a couple off next month or bleeding money until you have to lay them all off...
We have been asked by prospective clients to perform work for lower rates and pre IPO stock options. These clients have little to no money to spend on our services. One question we always ask these dot.coms when they solicit our services is "how do you make money?" If they say "banner advertising on our site" or something analagous to BS, we blow them off. Not nice to say, but we're trying to improve the quality of their products and services while growing and building our own service company, not make their bottom line for the quarter look good enough to justify buying a big screen TV and SPS2.
The technical comptence of some of the programmers and designers that work at these firms is appalling. I have met "senior internet developers" who were being billed out at over $150US/hr whose code looked like it was written by a 2nd year CompSci student. I haven't coded in over 5 years, and even I could find huge gaping holes in their stuff. I am constantly amazed that some people survive in this industry, that there isn't greater accountability. One dot.com I know who laid off some people recently, including their lead developer, were forced to hire him back on because no one could decipher his code. Amazing, but spaghetti coding is making a comeback...
A side issue: asking about hours *actually* worked compared to salary is always a good idea. I see many web dev firms that pay people a pretty good salary, give them free coffee/pop/etc., buy them meals 2-5 times a week, send them to Mexico for week-long vacations as a "bonus" for meeting deadlines but do not pay out overtime or allow people to bank their hours and take them off later. These people think "wow, I make $70K a year, and I get all this free stuff" but it's the employer who's getting the great deal here: they get you to work 18hr days 6 days a week and don't have to pay you an extra cent (or any extra related taxes).
Getting involved, either as a service provider for a dot.com, or as an employee for one, you have to be responsible for your choices. If you only care about money in the short term, then go ahead and take your chances. But don't be surprised if people can sense that you carry the negative cachet of having worked at or with a failed dot.com...
Remember that for many people, it's not about the money. It's about building something you believe in, something to which you can point and proudly say "I did that." Coolness only means so much if you disappear from the high-tech landscape after 5 years... without a trace.
Of course they keep it. You can't seriously expect that the US doesn't have a similar set-up (granted it may be more distributed and/or more secure than our Canadian government seems to feel is adequate...), or that France doesn't keep detailed records of its citizens... It has been shown time and time again that a smart person (with some time and effort) can get your life story, including your tax returns, private health information, etc.
And this doesn't even take into account how many people go out of their way to broadcast this information to the world via the Net.
I have received so many spam mails about non-existent viruses, that I make it a practice to educate all my friends, family, staff and partners to CHECK IT OUT FIRST (i.e.: find supporting documentation on the Symantec Anti-Virus research page) before mailing everybody in their address book. The more people I point in this direction, the less spam I get about viruses. Remember the Frog game that was supposed to be a virus? I received over 150 emails about that one alone.
We have to remember that most people really don't know about such things, and honestly think they're doing everyone a favour with these email notifications. Let a person send email ad-hoc, and they'll send everything to everyone; teach them how to be responsible users and distributors of information, and the spam traffic will drop dramatically.
My 2 cents
As a Canadian who keeps up on current events, I know that this tax was scheduled to go into effect last January (that is, Jan 1, 1999 not Jan 1, 2000). It was held back because of the public and (mostly) corporate outcry over it. Last I heard, it was being held off indefinitely. You can read about Bill C-32 here (it is an amendement to the Copyright Act). The bill did pass, and is legislation, but has not been implemented (as such that a consumer would notice any price differences).
This tax would extend to cover all recordable media (audio cassette tapes, CDs, video tapes, etc - not pre-recorded media), and is designed to help reduce copyright infringement of copyrighted materials.