Why live in Silly Valley for $50k, when you could move to the Midwest, where $50k buys you something more comfortable than a shoebox?
Born and raised here. Why should I let people for Michigan push me out?
Since you're not chasing dollars, why not chase quality of life?
Define quality of life? I can buy more stuff elsewhere, but I don't need to buy more stuff. I'm actually trying to get rid of the clutter in my life to live a minimalist lifestyle.
I didn't get cable or my first computer until 8th grade.
I personally never had cable, in part, because I stopped watching television 30+ years ago. Although I had a Commodore 64 as a teenager, I didn't get my first PC until a roommate brought home a surplus IBM AT to get me to stop playing with his shiny new 386. As limited as the 286 was, I ran a WildCat! BBS off that system for a year while in college.
Thanks goodness for the advent of the Commodore 64.
I went through three Commodore 64's from middle school through college in ten years. Although I had a near letter quality dot matrix printer with Commodore and Centronic connectors, I was still required to use a typewriter for my reports. I had that printer for 20 years before I replaced it with an inkjet printer in 2005.
I still have my Apple//e. I upgraded recently from a ][+
That was a school fad back in the 1980's. Every school had Apple ][ with dual floppy drives and monitor. Richer families spent $2,500 on that setup. Poorer families went for the cheaper $250 Atari, Commodore or TI computers.
Once you get above a certain income level, you start seeing any one less wealthy than you as "poor".
Nope. Probably because I'm regarded as "poor" because I enjoy working in IT Support, make $50K per year and live in Silicon Valley. Should I piss on others who make less than me because I'm pissed on by others who are "rich" than me?
401(k) values may fluctuate, but unless you bet everything on a single stock they don't disappear entirely like pensions do.
The most popular investment vehicle for most retirement accounts is the stock index funds. If the stock market goes up, the stock index will go up. If the stock market goes down, the stock index will go down. If the stock market crashes, the stock index crashes. As investors found out from the Great Recession, the value of their retirement accounts dropped 50%. If they sold to avoid future declines or took mandatory withdrawals, they were screwed because they missed out on a historic eight-year-old bull market. If this was the Great Depression, it would have taken 25 years before the stock market recovered. Some people don't have time to outwait the stock market.
Just wait until the state and local pensions can't keep pretending on their valuations.
That's a different kind of animal. And the day of reckoning isn't far off for many jurisdictions.
Actual contracts are rare. If you're a worker, the agreement is generally "you'll work for us until either you or we decide you shouldn't anymore".
I once had a contract that would fine me $500 per day ($5,000 maximum) if I didn't give a proper two week notice for quitting. Considering some of the other provisions that was put together by a New York City labor attorney, I seriously doubted it was California legal. Fortunately, that company got fired for the project I was working on and a different company offer me a better contract.
When I worked as a lead video game tester, I worked 40 hours straight to finish testing my title and I went home after the code release meeting. My boss expected me to back in the office the next morning at 9AM sharp, and got upset when I took three work days off and the weekend off. HR gave me overtime and double time even though they could given me only regular pay due to the quirk in California's overtime law (OT after eight hours or OT after 40 hours).
Many 401(k)s, (which are transportable and allow the owner to make choices) offer fixed income options (although for most, low fee index funds would be better), [...]
How much income does a fixed income generates in a near 0% interest rate environment? Not much. A recent Wall Street Journal article featured a 82-year-old retiree with a retirement account that's 95% in stocks because he wanted to juice the returns. Under conventional wisdom, he should have been 82% in fixed income and 18% in stocks (100 - 82 = 18). Or, since retirees are living longer and risk outliving their retirement funds, 62% fixed income and 38% stocks (120 - 82 = 38). The days of 15% interest on CDs are long gone.
[...] and many pension plans (which the beneficiary has no control over) have gone bankrupt due to mismanagement or lack of funding.
Pension plans are covered by federal pension insurance. Who will cover the "mismanagement of lack of funding" by individuals and/or a market crash caused by Wall Street players trying to break the casino as they did in the Great Recession?
Pensions are, however, an excellent way of locking employees into the company store, as they are often structured to offer higher rewards for longer servitude.
My late father got his pension through the union. Although he worked for three generations of bricklayers for 50 years, he worked for three sole proprietorships and a corporation. The bricklayer-owners also got their pension through the union. Everyone had a comfortable retirement because they didn't have to worry about a stock market crash.
When a spinning disk fails, you usually get some auditory clues beforehand.
I had hard drives that failed immediately and without warning after five years of 24/7 service. SMART alerts can indicate when a failure is likely months before it happens. I routinely replace the HDDs in my file server every five years.
Plus they wear out all too quickly.
My coworker told me that his six-year-old 120GB SSD that he got for $200 finally gave up the ghost. He got a replacement 240GB SSD for $75.
Not coincidentally, during Reagan's first year in office, the IRS ruled that 401(k)s could be funded through payroll deductions. Also during his first term, the Tax Reform Act of 1984 ensured that if a company offered 401(k)s, they were available to all employees. Rather than "kicking it down the road," they created an incentive for people to take control of their destiny away from the government.
Not so coincidentally, companies were no longer obligated to provide pensions and Wall Street collected billions in fees from people who had no interest in playing at the casino. Unlike boring old pensions, 401(k) accounts goes up and down with the market. If the value of your 401(k) plummets 50% as it did during the Great Recession and you have to make mandatory withdrawals, tough shit.
You should have saved more.
The real problem is not congress, but the common attitude of "I want it all, and I want it now" ingrained in our entitlement society, and the failure of individuals to save for the future.
Let's blame individuals for not saving enough for retirement at the casino when pensions could have easily provided for their retirement needs.
In the 1930's, there was 19 workers for every retiree. In 2030, when most of the baby boomers are retired, there will be two workers for every retiree. This problem has been well known since the Reagan Administration, but politicians found it easy to kick the can down the road.
Like my friends who switched from programming to health care in college? They make more money than I do but they hate wiping other people's asses for a living. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my career in IT support, and some of my best paying contracts were for hospitals.
You just went smart enough to program well. Its hard work. All thinking. High pressure.
I made the president's list for maintaining a 4.0 GPA in my major while taking two classes per semester, working 80 hours per week as a lead video game tester, taking an all-day ceramics course on Saturdays and teaching Sunday school.
Tech support requires much less. No thinking under pressure. Well not much.
Like unboxing 750 PCs and 1,500 monitors, throwing out three dumpsters of packing material, and finishing a one-year contract in nine months? Or going through 600 old tickets in 60 days when management scheduled six months to complete the project? Or being assigned individual tickets that require four to six hours of research to find a solution?
Hehe and you say you clean up the mess programmers leave? Like refactoring or seeping the floor?
More like the program blowing up from not being thoroughly tested before being released into a production environment. Unhandled exception error?! Shame!
Maybe study harder instead of gaming like a looser?
I'm too busy studying for my InfoSec certifications to play video games.
I realized at that point that as a programmer, I do not want to work in IT ever again.
Sounds like you worked in a small company. Corporate IT is a different ball game. The worse corporate IT I ever worked for had upper management insisting that the IT service provider deliver "double the performance for half the cost" as a requirement. The only way to meet that metric was to cut the staff in half and double the workload on everyone else. Last time I checked that company was on its fifth IT service provider, the IT staff was too small to support current operations, and everyone I knew ten years ago is long gone.
What's "new and shiny" in CS? When I went back to community college to learn computer programming on a $3K tax credit that George W. signed into law after 9/11, I was trying to leverage six years as a black box tester to become a white box tester. That never happened since I got into IT support, enjoyed the work and never looked back. The only "new and shiny" thing I've gotten back then was Microsoft Visual Studio at academic pricing.
How do you become a more professional programmer when your full time job isn't programming?
I was a video game tester for six years, went back to school to get an A.S. degree in computer programming, and got into IT support because I enjoy the work. I program at home (Python and web development) and occasionally write PowerShell scripts at work, but the only time I deal with other programmers is when I'm cleaning up their messes over the network at work.
BTW, Microsoft SharePoint IS NOT a proper bug tracking tool.
How about paying proper experienced people, and put them orienting your newbies?
That would break the HR model. Newly hired American programmers must hit the road running on Day 1 without any additional training. Therefore they need five years of experience in a technology that came out six months ago. When the employer can't find anyone, they will hire H1B programmers who don't know anything and train them in the new technology.
You cant teach if you dont know your subject [...]
That never prevented the gym instructor from teaching English in grade school. I had to skip high school to get a proper education at the community college.
Slashdot Mirror
No wonder 17 tabs of web comics were taking so long to load.
Of course income isn't the be all and end all.
This is Silicon Valley. If you don't make $100K+ and own two Tesla cars, you're not a real man. According to Slashdot.
Why live in Silly Valley for $50k, when you could move to the Midwest, where $50k buys you something more comfortable than a shoebox?
Born and raised here. Why should I let people for Michigan push me out?
Since you're not chasing dollars, why not chase quality of life?
Define quality of life? I can buy more stuff elsewhere, but I don't need to buy more stuff. I'm actually trying to get rid of the clutter in my life to live a minimalist lifestyle.
I didn't get cable or my first computer until 8th grade.
I personally never had cable, in part, because I stopped watching television 30+ years ago. Although I had a Commodore 64 as a teenager, I didn't get my first PC until a roommate brought home a surplus IBM AT to get me to stop playing with his shiny new 386. As limited as the 286 was, I ran a WildCat! BBS off that system for a year while in college.
Thanks goodness for the advent of the Commodore 64.
I went through three Commodore 64's from middle school through college in ten years. Although I had a near letter quality dot matrix printer with Commodore and Centronic connectors, I was still required to use a typewriter for my reports. I had that printer for 20 years before I replaced it with an inkjet printer in 2005.
I still have my Apple //e. I upgraded recently from a ][+
That was a school fad back in the 1980's. Every school had Apple ][ with dual floppy drives and monitor. Richer families spent $2,500 on that setup. Poorer families went for the cheaper $250 Atari, Commodore or TI computers.
Once you get above a certain income level, you start seeing any one less wealthy than you as "poor".
Nope. Probably because I'm regarded as "poor" because I enjoy working in IT Support, make $50K per year and live in Silicon Valley. Should I piss on others who make less than me because I'm pissed on by others who are "rich" than me?
401(k) values may fluctuate, but unless you bet everything on a single stock they don't disappear entirely like pensions do.
The most popular investment vehicle for most retirement accounts is the stock index funds. If the stock market goes up, the stock index will go up. If the stock market goes down, the stock index will go down. If the stock market crashes, the stock index crashes. As investors found out from the Great Recession, the value of their retirement accounts dropped 50%. If they sold to avoid future declines or took mandatory withdrawals, they were screwed because they missed out on a historic eight-year-old bull market. If this was the Great Depression, it would have taken 25 years before the stock market recovered. Some people don't have time to outwait the stock market.
Just wait until the state and local pensions can't keep pretending on their valuations.
That's a different kind of animal. And the day of reckoning isn't far off for many jurisdictions.
The girls in the seventh grade thought I came from a "poor" family because we didn't have cable to watch MTV and we didn't own an Apple ][ computer.
Actual contracts are rare. If you're a worker, the agreement is generally "you'll work for us until either you or we decide you shouldn't anymore".
I once had a contract that would fine me $500 per day ($5,000 maximum) if I didn't give a proper two week notice for quitting. Considering some of the other provisions that was put together by a New York City labor attorney, I seriously doubted it was California legal. Fortunately, that company got fired for the project I was working on and a different company offer me a better contract.
When I worked as a lead video game tester, I worked 40 hours straight to finish testing my title and I went home after the code release meeting. My boss expected me to back in the office the next morning at 9AM sharp, and got upset when I took three work days off and the weekend off. HR gave me overtime and double time even though they could given me only regular pay due to the quirk in California's overtime law (OT after eight hours or OT after 40 hours).
Many 401(k)s, (which are transportable and allow the owner to make choices) offer fixed income options (although for most, low fee index funds would be better), [...]
How much income does a fixed income generates in a near 0% interest rate environment? Not much. A recent Wall Street Journal article featured a 82-year-old retiree with a retirement account that's 95% in stocks because he wanted to juice the returns. Under conventional wisdom, he should have been 82% in fixed income and 18% in stocks (100 - 82 = 18). Or, since retirees are living longer and risk outliving their retirement funds, 62% fixed income and 38% stocks (120 - 82 = 38). The days of 15% interest on CDs are long gone.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/stocks-have-tripled-since-crisis-but-low-rates-are-still-squeezing-savers-1488969009
[...] and many pension plans (which the beneficiary has no control over) have gone bankrupt due to mismanagement or lack of funding.
Pension plans are covered by federal pension insurance. Who will cover the "mismanagement of lack of funding" by individuals and/or a market crash caused by Wall Street players trying to break the casino as they did in the Great Recession?
Pensions are, however, an excellent way of locking employees into the company store, as they are often structured to offer higher rewards for longer servitude.
My late father got his pension through the union. Although he worked for three generations of bricklayers for 50 years, he worked for three sole proprietorships and a corporation. The bricklayer-owners also got their pension through the union. Everyone had a comfortable retirement because they didn't have to worry about a stock market crash.
When a spinning disk fails, you usually get some auditory clues beforehand.
I had hard drives that failed immediately and without warning after five years of 24/7 service. SMART alerts can indicate when a failure is likely months before it happens. I routinely replace the HDDs in my file server every five years.
Plus they wear out all too quickly.
My coworker told me that his six-year-old 120GB SSD that he got for $200 finally gave up the ghost. He got a replacement 240GB SSD for $75.
Not coincidentally, during Reagan's first year in office, the IRS ruled that 401(k)s could be funded through payroll deductions. Also during his first term, the Tax Reform Act of 1984 ensured that if a company offered 401(k)s, they were available to all employees. Rather than "kicking it down the road," they created an incentive for people to take control of their destiny away from the government.
Not so coincidentally, companies were no longer obligated to provide pensions and Wall Street collected billions in fees from people who had no interest in playing at the casino. Unlike boring old pensions, 401(k) accounts goes up and down with the market. If the value of your 401(k) plummets 50% as it did during the Great Recession and you have to make mandatory withdrawals, tough shit. You should have saved more.
The real problem is not congress, but the common attitude of "I want it all, and I want it now" ingrained in our entitlement society, and the failure of individuals to save for the future.
Let's blame individuals for not saving enough for retirement at the casino when pensions could have easily provided for their retirement needs.
In the 1930's, there was 19 workers for every retiree. In 2030, when most of the baby boomers are retired, there will be two workers for every retiree. This problem has been well known since the Reagan Administration, but politicians found it easy to kick the can down the road.
Tip: If you are trying to humble brag, the claimed accomplishments are supposed to be meaningful.
Great tip!
But creimer is a self admitted troll, so eot
Not quite. I love trolling the trolls on Slashdot. That's not the same as being a troll.
No one choose tech support because they like it.
Like my friends who switched from programming to health care in college? They make more money than I do but they hate wiping other people's asses for a living. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my career in IT support, and some of my best paying contracts were for hospitals.
You just went smart enough to program well. Its hard work. All thinking. High pressure.
I made the president's list for maintaining a 4.0 GPA in my major while taking two classes per semester, working 80 hours per week as a lead video game tester, taking an all-day ceramics course on Saturdays and teaching Sunday school.
Tech support requires much less. No thinking under pressure. Well not much.
Like unboxing 750 PCs and 1,500 monitors, throwing out three dumpsters of packing material, and finishing a one-year contract in nine months? Or going through 600 old tickets in 60 days when management scheduled six months to complete the project? Or being assigned individual tickets that require four to six hours of research to find a solution?
Hehe and you say you clean up the mess programmers leave? Like refactoring or seeping the floor?
More like the program blowing up from not being thoroughly tested before being released into a production environment. Unhandled exception error?! Shame!
Maybe study harder instead of gaming like a looser?
I'm too busy studying for my InfoSec certifications to play video games.
You basically have to know someone to get hired past 40 at some places.
Or get a job in government IT. I'm the youngest at 47 in my department. Everyone else is in their 50's, 60's or 70's.
I read headline as, "Personal Data Stolen By Farmers Insurance."
I realized at that point that as a programmer, I do not want to work in IT ever again.
Sounds like you worked in a small company. Corporate IT is a different ball game. The worse corporate IT I ever worked for had upper management insisting that the IT service provider deliver "double the performance for half the cost" as a requirement. The only way to meet that metric was to cut the staff in half and double the workload on everyone else. Last time I checked that company was on its fifth IT service provider, the IT staff was too small to support current operations, and everyone I knew ten years ago is long gone.
What's "new and shiny" in CS? When I went back to community college to learn computer programming on a $3K tax credit that George W. signed into law after 9/11, I was trying to leverage six years as a black box tester to become a white box tester. That never happened since I got into IT support, enjoyed the work and never looked back. The only "new and shiny" thing I've gotten back then was Microsoft Visual Studio at academic pricing.
How do you become a more professional programmer when your full time job isn't programming?
I was a video game tester for six years, went back to school to get an A.S. degree in computer programming, and got into IT support because I enjoy the work. I program at home (Python and web development) and occasionally write PowerShell scripts at work, but the only time I deal with other programmers is when I'm cleaning up their messes over the network at work.
BTW, Microsoft SharePoint IS NOT a proper bug tracking tool.
Fucktard,
Sorry. I don't know your mother.
At this point I am struggling understand the relevance of your argument as presented.
I could say the same about your comment.
Mod that one.. :)
I could say the same about your comment.
How about paying proper experienced people, and put them orienting your newbies?
That would break the HR model. Newly hired American programmers must hit the road running on Day 1 without any additional training. Therefore they need five years of experience in a technology that came out six months ago. When the employer can't find anyone, they will hire H1B programmers who don't know anything and train them in the new technology.
You cant teach if you dont know your subject [...]
That never prevented the gym instructor from teaching English in grade school. I had to skip high school to get a proper education at the community college.