POS software I never wanted, came installed with the phone and it f**ing turns on, starts Word up periodically, full mic access, full camera access, sends data to Microsoft, another couple of hundred KB today. F**ing Samsung, I am not buying your smartphones ever again. NEVER bundle crapware, especially Microsoft crapware.
I worked at a company before the dot com bust where the managers installed desktop monitoring software. One day my manager ran into my cube to inform me that I shouldn't be browsing Amazon on company time. Only then did he realized that I was eating a breakfast burrito and browsing the Internet on my break, which is acceptable under company policy, and I told him to bugger off. Most of the employees figured out that the company next door had an open wireless access point. Just about everyone got a wireless PDA to browse the Internet.
I put my smartphone on silent and forget about during my work day. Mostly to conserve battery power as I use my smartphone on the express bus, reading The Wall Street Journal in the morning and an ebook in the evenings.
The Republican Party in California has more in common with the endangered spotted owl than 1/10th of US population. One is toilet paper, the other is reality.
Creating a bootable USB stick under Windows is a hit-and-miss affair. I just find it easier to pop in a blank disc, burn the Linux ISO to the disc, and boot off of that.
So basically, you are OK until the next big rent increase?
Rent control in San Jose limits the rent increases to five percent per year (used to be eight percent until this year). I'm studying for my InfoSec certifications and planning to get a $100K per year job in three years. I'm certainly hoping to move out long before then. OTOH, I had a coworker in New York City who took 15 years to move out of his rent-controlled studio apartment. Moving is a PITA.
I live in a nice 4-bedroom house in Silicon Valley, which, when I sell it, I expect it to pay back every penny that I have spent in mortgage interest, property taxes, maintenance, insurance, etc.
My older brother made that bet too with a three-bedroom house in Morgan Hill. Seven years after the Great Recession, he can't retire because the mortgage is still underwater and he's still paying off the down payment borrowed from his wife's 401k plan. He might have to work until the day he dies. What a tragedy.
Even if house prices drop dramatically in the next few years, I can still expect it to have cost less per year than your little box.
When I'm ready to retire to Las Vegas in 20+ years, I'm free to give my 30 day notice, buy a trailer and hit the road.
I'm not sure why you want to take what is obviously joking around about expensive real estate so personally.
This is California. A roommate and I had dead petunias in our front yard of a duplex that we rented prior to the dot com bust and the real estate market was sizzling hot. A little old lady came by to tell us that those dead petunias reduced the value of her home by $25,000. I asked her if she was selling her house. She said no. When I pointed out that she didn't know what her house was worth until she sold it, she walked off in a huff. If you rent, you get this kind of abuse all the time.
I'm the one "living BELOW their means" out of the two of us.
Not exactly. I'm living below my means relative to people in Silicon Valley, as $50K means I'm the working poor. Although the people who earn minimum wage and live in Silicon Valley would strongly disagree.
Why would I jest? If you're amazed that I make $50K in Silicon Valley, consider the people who make minimum wage in Silicon Valley. Those hardworking people always amazes me.
Twenty-plus years ago, I made $10K per year as a spaghetti cook. Today I make $50K per year as a senior system admin. Three years from now I'll be making $100K per year as an InfoSec tech.
My point was you are either a really bad IT professional only worth $50K a year or complacent to the point were you only value yourself at $50K a year.
You made a bad assumption of my past earnings history.
I give my pet rabbit more indoor space than that.:(
My brother's in-laws bought a $1M five-bedroom house in the Gilroy foothills. The wet bar was larger than my kitchen, the kitchen was bigger than my studio apartment. Very obscene. Especially since the in-laws had five bedrooms of family heirloom furniture that don't want to get rid of. They later moved out of state to buy a farm with a barn to store their furniture.
Because you gave cost as a downside of doing so, with no upside mentioned. So I figured they wouldn't want them,
We're talking about cost. I gave an example of cost. Cost has nothing to do with wanting a family. Plenty of people have children without considering the cost.
[...] the topic was that 50,000 means cardboard box [...]
So my home is a "cardboard box" because it doesn't fit the norm of a Silicon Valley McMansion? Pfft... You sound like my brother who complained about my father moving out of a two-bedroom house after our mother passed away, got rid of everything, bought a trailer home for $10,000 and lived in a trailer park for $400 per month. He couldn't understand why anyone would want to live BELOW their means.
Every job I've had in the area, $50k is what we pay people when we allow them to take the plastic protector off the sharp edge of the butter knives in the company kitchen.
Unicorn companies tend to overpay for talent, like paying kitchen workers well above minimum wage. One company spent $25,000 per employee on perks.
It's junior level pay.
Since I'm working on a government IT contract, $50K is the national average. My subcontractor has my job title as Senior System Administrator. I've been trying to getting a cost of living adjustment for $100K per year. But the contracting officer is reluctant to do so since the SF and NYC folks will want a COLA.
Or Uber-driver pay.
Uber drivers make a little more than minimum wage.
As a software engineer I made that right out of college, and that was 20 years ago.
I've always love it when someone rolls out the CS argument ("kids today make that kind of money right out of college"). Except that I spent eight years in Special Ed (misdiagnosed, of course), never went to high school, and got two associate degrees, A.A. in General Ed (1994) and A.S. in Computer Programming (2007). The only kind of work I can do in the tech industry is digging virtual trenches.
Today I am easily making 3x that (not counting my 12% yearly bonus), and I am in Utah.
You must feel really bad that kids make that kind of money right out of college.
Obviously you are free to not want a family. Just as others are free to want a family.
What makes you think I have a choice about having a family?
You are screwed if everybody doesn't want a family though, so luckily there are others willing to earn more money than you (relative to their cost of living location) and have children to prop up our economic system that relies on growth.
We're all screwed in 2030 when the baby boomers are retired and outnumber workers (tax base), Social Security/Medicare will consume two-thirds of the federal budget, and taxes will have to go way up to pay for everything else.
That's funny, since 1466/month on 50000/year is into the "can't afford" range [...]
I'm not sure why some would consider that the "can't afford" range. At $50K per year, I'm putting 20% away in savings.
Slashdot Mirror
POS software I never wanted, came installed with the phone and it f**ing turns on, starts Word up periodically, full mic access, full camera access, sends data to Microsoft, another couple of hundred KB today. F**ing Samsung, I am not buying your smartphones ever again. NEVER bundle crapware, especially Microsoft crapware.
That's Android for you.
I worked at a company before the dot com bust where the managers installed desktop monitoring software. One day my manager ran into my cube to inform me that I shouldn't be browsing Amazon on company time. Only then did he realized that I was eating a breakfast burrito and browsing the Internet on my break, which is acceptable under company policy, and I told him to bugger off. Most of the employees figured out that the company next door had an open wireless access point. Just about everyone got a wireless PDA to browse the Internet.
Slashdot exists is to keep me amused while I'm waiting for a script at work to finish. Thank you for your participation.
I put my smartphone on silent and forget about during my work day. Mostly to conserve battery power as I use my smartphone on the express bus, reading The Wall Street Journal in the morning and an ebook in the evenings.
The Republican Party in California has more in common with the endangered spotted owl than 1/10th of US population. One is toilet paper, the other is reality.
Good lord. Do they have alarms and a NASA style countdown so everybody is aware of COB? Or do they just fire you if you try to bill for OT?
You clock in, you clock out. The numbers must add up at the end of week.
It was amazing how productive those 60 seconds were.
Under the rules of my employment contracts, you would have been terminated.
I do. My employment contracts prohibits me from working more than 40 hours per week. When I go home, work stays at work.
All my employment contracts for IT support prohibits me from working 40 hours per week. I haven't worked overtime in over a decade.
My junk box still has a USB floppy drive but no floppy disks. I haven't had a floppy drive installed in a system for ten years.
Creating a bootable USB stick under Windows is a hit-and-miss affair. I just find it easier to pop in a blank disc, burn the Linux ISO to the disc, and boot off of that.
Darwinism. There's an app for that.
So basically, you are OK until the next big rent increase?
Rent control in San Jose limits the rent increases to five percent per year (used to be eight percent until this year). I'm studying for my InfoSec certifications and planning to get a $100K per year job in three years. I'm certainly hoping to move out long before then. OTOH, I had a coworker in New York City who took 15 years to move out of his rent-controlled studio apartment. Moving is a PITA.
I live in a nice 4-bedroom house in Silicon Valley, which, when I sell it, I expect it to pay back every penny that I have spent in mortgage interest, property taxes, maintenance, insurance, etc.
My older brother made that bet too with a three-bedroom house in Morgan Hill. Seven years after the Great Recession, he can't retire because the mortgage is still underwater and he's still paying off the down payment borrowed from his wife's 401k plan. He might have to work until the day he dies. What a tragedy.
Even if house prices drop dramatically in the next few years, I can still expect it to have cost less per year than your little box.
When I'm ready to retire to Las Vegas in 20+ years, I'm free to give my 30 day notice, buy a trailer and hit the road.
I'm not sure why you want to take what is obviously joking around about expensive real estate so personally.
This is California. A roommate and I had dead petunias in our front yard of a duplex that we rented prior to the dot com bust and the real estate market was sizzling hot. A little old lady came by to tell us that those dead petunias reduced the value of her home by $25,000. I asked her if she was selling her house. She said no. When I pointed out that she didn't know what her house was worth until she sold it, she walked off in a huff. If you rent, you get this kind of abuse all the time.
I'm the one "living BELOW their means" out of the two of us.
Not exactly. I'm living below my means relative to people in Silicon Valley, as $50K means I'm the working poor. Although the people who earn minimum wage and live in Silicon Valley would strongly disagree.
As an IT support contractor for 20+ years
You made some assumptions for us...
How so?
Surely you jest.
Why would I jest? If you're amazed that I make $50K in Silicon Valley, consider the people who make minimum wage in Silicon Valley. Those hardworking people always amazes me.
20+ years at $50,000 in SV is just sad.
Twenty-plus years ago, I made $10K per year as a spaghetti cook. Today I make $50K per year as a senior system admin. Three years from now I'll be making $100K per year as an InfoSec tech.
My point was you are either a really bad IT professional only worth $50K a year or complacent to the point were you only value yourself at $50K a year.
You made a bad assumption of my past earnings history.
I give my pet rabbit more indoor space than that. :(
My brother's in-laws bought a $1M five-bedroom house in the Gilroy foothills. The wet bar was larger than my kitchen, the kitchen was bigger than my studio apartment. Very obscene. Especially since the in-laws had five bedrooms of family heirloom furniture that don't want to get rid of. They later moved out of state to buy a farm with a barn to store their furniture.
Because you gave cost as a downside of doing so, with no upside mentioned. So I figured they wouldn't want them,
We're talking about cost. I gave an example of cost. Cost has nothing to do with wanting a family. Plenty of people have children without considering the cost.
[...] the topic was that 50,000 means cardboard box [...]
So my home is a "cardboard box" because it doesn't fit the norm of a Silicon Valley McMansion? Pfft... You sound like my brother who complained about my father moving out of a two-bedroom house after our mother passed away, got rid of everything, bought a trailer home for $10,000 and lived in a trailer park for $400 per month. He couldn't understand why anyone would want to live BELOW their means.
Every job I've had in the area, $50k is what we pay people when we allow them to take the plastic protector off the sharp edge of the butter knives in the company kitchen.
Unicorn companies tend to overpay for talent, like paying kitchen workers well above minimum wage. One company spent $25,000 per employee on perks.
It's junior level pay.
Since I'm working on a government IT contract, $50K is the national average. My subcontractor has my job title as Senior System Administrator. I've been trying to getting a cost of living adjustment for $100K per year. But the contracting officer is reluctant to do so since the SF and NYC folks will want a COLA.
Or Uber-driver pay.
Uber drivers make a little more than minimum wage.
http://time.com/money/3678389/uber-drivers-wages/
I know for a fact there are homeless people in the streets bringing home more than that.
During the Great Recession, a panhandler on a particular street corner in San Francisco made $85 per hour.
Seriously dude, it might be worth reevaluating where your career is.
Seriously, dude, your apple and oranages comparisons sucks.
As a software engineer I made that right out of college, and that was 20 years ago.
I've always love it when someone rolls out the CS argument ("kids today make that kind of money right out of college"). Except that I spent eight years in Special Ed (misdiagnosed, of course), never went to high school, and got two associate degrees, A.A. in General Ed (1994) and A.S. in Computer Programming (2007). The only kind of work I can do in the tech industry is digging virtual trenches.
Today I am easily making 3x that (not counting my 12% yearly bonus), and I am in Utah.
You must feel really bad that kids make that kind of money right out of college.
You are some kind of terrible or just plain complacent. Neither should be held in high regard.
Does your comment have a point that makes sense?
That title reads like a real estate ad to get Millennials to move there.
Obviously you are free to not want a family. Just as others are free to want a family.
What makes you think I have a choice about having a family?
You are screwed if everybody doesn't want a family though, so luckily there are others willing to earn more money than you (relative to their cost of living location) and have children to prop up our economic system that relies on growth.
We're all screwed in 2030 when the baby boomers are retired and outnumber workers (tax base), Social Security/Medicare will consume two-thirds of the federal budget, and taxes will have to go way up to pay for everything else.
That's funny, since 1466/month on 50000/year is into the "can't afford" range [...]
I'm not sure why some would consider that the "can't afford" range. At $50K per year, I'm putting 20% away in savings.