I had a Galaxy S7 and loved it, but I will not buy another Samsung phone until they ship a flagship that does not include Facebook Services as an uninstallable app. At the price one pays for a Samsung flagship, one should not be subjected to the constant location tracking and who the hell knows what else that app is doing. You can disable (but not remove) the Facebook mobile app, but the "Facebook Services" app continues to run --and update itself-- in the background, like it or not. The only way to get Facebook Services off a Samsung phone is to jailbreak it, which is not a reasonable solution in my opinion.
I think Facebook is an evil organization, one that has weakened democracy in the United States. Zuckerberg is an evil genius who has figured out how to turn our basic human need for connection into something that can be approximated via software and then heavily monetized with no regard for the impact their service has on the brains or the lives of their users.
Obviously, nobody forces you to use Facebook. I used it for a while and then gave it four years ago. As a result of this choice, I will not spend $1000+ dollars for a high-end Samsung phone if it's going to serve as an attack vector for Facebook to reenter my life. No thanks.
So... I don't care how amazing "One UI" is... if Facebook Services ships on the S10 then that phone is dead to me.
The author of this "study" is correct in saying that "engineers who combine tech skills with business skills... earn the most" but they are incorrect in placing product management at the top of their list.
An experienced enterprise sales engineer at a company like Salesforce or Oracle can pull in $250,000 a year. And unlike a "director product management," a sales engineer at that pay level is not a manager; one can hit this level of pay without having any headcount.
Why are sales engineers paid so well? Three reasons:
(1) Limited supply. Finding people with the rare mix of technical and interpersonal skills is difficult and big companies need a lot of sales engineers.
(2) Revenue generation. Unlike product management, sales engineers are on the front line of the revenue generation process. Lose all of your product managers and your sales team can keep functioning for a year or so. Lose all of your sales engineers and the revenue engine seizes up immediately.
(3) Sales culture. Big companies throw huge amounts of money at their sales executives. The top salespeople at places like Salesforce and Oracle bring in over $1M per year. Paying the top sales engineers $250K is a relative bargain.
To be clear... I didn't get any of these jobs via recruiters. I got the first job because someone I knew socially posted an update that he was looking to hire someone with my skill set. He didn't reach out to me directly because he didn't know me professionally... I kept that job for five years.
When I was ready to move I started blogged about my work and posting links to my blog on relevant groups on LinkedIn. One of those posts get picked up and circulated at Salesforce. A VP who lives near me reached out and invited me to lunch and it progressed quickly from there. I never would have gotten that job at Salesforce by applying... too much noise in the signal. I worked there for two years
When I was ready to leave the job at Salesforce I identified a start-up company where I would like to work. I cold-connected to the VP who would hire someone like me. He gave me his phone number and asked me to call him. I called him every other Friday for about two months, this led to an interview and me getting hired. Those guys went public earlier this year... I stayed a little over a year so I could hit my one year stock vesting cliff.
Three weeks after I left Salesforce I got a message from a former Salesforce SVP who had recently formed a new company. He was looking for people like me. I have never met this person... he was my boss' boss' boss, but I was smart enough to connect with him when we both worked for the Salesforce. I didn't make this jump immediately, but I did eventually leave start-up #1 to join start-up #2 and I've been there for over 2.5 years now.
10+ years of steady employment... all found via my LinkedIn connections. No recruiters were involved in any of these job moves.
If you are not getting any value from LinkedIn, that's you own fault.
LinkedIn is far from perfect and I it has definitely gotten worse in recent years, but...
I can attribute the past 10 years of my employment, across four different jobs, directly to LinkedIn. If LinkedIn did not exist then I likely would have found any of these jobs through other means.
That being said... if you get no value from LinkedIn, perhaps you should stop using it. I reached that point with Facebook several years ago and I've never missed it.
The price tag for this tiny, Italian vapor-car is $13,990, which is $2000 more than the Arcimoto.
If you are smart, skip the Microlino and get an Arcimoto instead. The Arcimoto FUV is faster, safer, cheaper and a lot more fun. It's been in development for about a decade and is not beginning to ramp up to mass production in Eugene, OR.
Who am I kidding... Trump could more easily chop off his shriveled up little cock before he stops using social media. But the rest of us sane people should log out of Facebook and Twitter and never go back.
It's time to start constantly trolling that asshat with constant references to all of his most notable failures: Trump University, The 3 Chapter 11 filings of Trump Resorts, Trump Mortgage, Trump Steaks and Eric.
Lets say you get 10,000 shares, at a strike price of $10 a share, with a 4 year vesting period.
Not likely. I've worked at six start-ups including one that went public and two that are moving in that direction. I was employee #80 at the one that went public, #666 at the next and #200ish at my current employer, so I speak from experience.
A strike price of $10 is not a realistic example. My strike prices have all ranged from 1/10 of a penny to $1.25. My most recent pre-IPO stock grants have been in the neighborhood of one dollar. So let's change your example to:
"Let's say you get 10,000 shares, at a strike price of $1.00"
So the $10K in debt is not likely to break most tech employees. As noted by others, the real trick is to buy your stock in such a way that you avoid short-term capital gains and the dreaded AMT.
The problem here is the sudden change from having almost nothing to having $2.5B. If you talked to someone who was well adjusted with $2.0B, another $500M would be no big deal. But going from $0 to $2.5B is too big of a jump.
So run it like a business or an investment, with a budget and goals. No investor would hand a brand new CEO $2.5B... they would ration the funds over time. You could do the same with yourself.
For example, put most of the money into a well managed trust and "give" yourself $250K per year as an allowance. You could bump that amount up each year on a predetermined schedule, but you'll probably hit a point where you don't need more. Set a goal that once you've gotten married you'll have access to a one time "payment" of an additional $500,000, perhaps to buy a new house. (You might be financing part of your house... ironic, but it's all part of not being isolated. And your credit score is kick ass.) You first child is born... bump your annual pay by another $50K for each child while your money manager begins automatically setting aside money for college funds.
In other words, live the comfortable life of a trust fund baby, except that you play the role of both parent and child. You will need a reputable firm to handle the details... reach out to other billionaires for recommendations on who to consider for this critical role.
You will probably die with over $2B in the bank, but so what so long as you are happy and you've led a good life? And if you throw yourself into the world (travel, volunteering, parenting, etc.) you will likely discover a cause that you feel is worth of your largess. Don't look for it... you'll know it when you see it.
Xojo (as it's called today) is definitely worth a look. You can download the IDE and try it out for as long as you like. They only charge you for a license when you want to compile a standalone app.
The first two minutes were like "Cloud computing for kindergartners". In minute three he referenced a Dilbert comic, which is bad. He got the reference wrong, which is even worse. (Here's the comic in question for anyone who still cares about Dilbert: http://dhansen.cs.georgefox.edu/~dhansen/Classes/DBMS/sqldb.gif)
Perhaps this fellow had some brilliant stuff to say in minutes 4-18.... perhaps not.
Helping on forums is not a bad thing, but I don't think it's an equal substitute for getting out of the house and doing real work for a nonprofit. Getting knee deep in the weeds at a real organization gives you a different level of experience than helping out on forums. Besides, there's nobody on the forums you can call on as a reference. Imagine how great it would be to have some senior person from the local food bank / animal shelter / literacy program / homeless shelter give a glowing reference to a potential employer.
Again... helping out on forums is not a bad thing, but I don't think it's a substitute for step #2.
(1) Use the other resources mentioned above to teach yourself SQL server and Exchange.
(2) Find a nonprofit agency in your area who needs help with their computing environment. Offer to help them on a volunteer (ie, unpaid) basis. Be sure this help includes working with SQL Server and Exchange. Be picky about this. Do not get involved with an agency where the work will not help you build your practical skill set. Also be sure that there is someone at the nonprofit agency who is willing to act as a reference for you at some point in the future. You don't have to explicitly ask this upfront, just be sure that the senior most person you can find knows enough about who you are to say nice things about you.
(3) Use this real life experience to help you land the next job on your way up the ladder.
(4) Optional: Continue working with the nonprofit agency if it makes you happy.
BTW... you can do steps 1 & 2 in parallel, ie start looking for a nonprofit while you are learning SQL Server and Exchange. Both steps might take a little time.
I think the noise canceling headphones are your best option. You want a set that fully covers your ears. The Bose Quiet Comfort 15 is the top of the line. It's $300, but isn't four+ years of concentration worth this?
The headphones alone will not suffice, you need to pump some sound into the headphones to drown out the remaining background noise. I have two recommendations. The first is to get an app for your smart phone that sends a different frequency into each ear. The right set of frequencies can help you get your brain into a state of focussed concentration. I thought this was BS, but I spent a few bucks for an app (BrainWaves for iPhone) and found that it works for me.
The alternative suggestion is classical music, but not just any classical music. Go read a book call SuperLearning. It explains the studies that determined that classic music with certain characteristics (tempo, time signature, etc.) help people to learn. Read the book, buy some digital copies of the right classic music and pump that into your Bose QC 15s.
So not just any classic and certainly not some of that technoshit, but the right, well studies set of classic music should help you quite a bit.
Rather than trying to become a (generic) developer, you might consider specializing in one (very popular) application. If I were in your shoes I would go sign up for a free developer account at salesforce.com. Then click on the "Help and Training" link at the top of the page and take all of the free admin training they offer. Study up for a while, then pay $200 to take the "Salesforce Administrator" certification test. All of this requires zero coding and the admin certification is a marketable skill. Go find a non-profit using Salesforce who needs some administration help; that puts some real world experience on your resume. Then go looking for some (perhaps part-time) paid Salesforce admin work while you start learning how to be a salesforce developer. This is a path that's probably not going to popular among the slashdot crowd (because it's vendor specific) but it's one possible path for you to consider.
First of all, all of you should be interviewing your (potential) boss when applying for jobs. It's really no different than the scenario described above.
Questions I like to ask:
* What do you look for when hiring {insert your job title here} ? * How do you motivate people? * How do you measure the performance of your direct reports?
The "give me an example" questions are largely bs because anyone can make up an answer. Ask questions that assume someone has a system for doing their job, such as:
* What is your system for managing a team?
I also like to give people homework (like reading an online article about some relevant topic). Then I ask the next interviewer (scheduled a few days later) to ask questions about the homework. If someone does the homework and is able to speak somewhat intelligently about the topic, that's a positive sign. Ignoring the homework works about as well as it did in grade school.
They are a global IT consulting/custom software development company with offices in 10 countries.
ThoughtWorks organizes their business around three pillars, the third being "Advocate passionately for social and economic justice." That means that the company generally avoids the same sort of work you would like to avoid AND seeks out work that will make the world a better place.
They also do a lot of cutting edge stuff... they were pioneers in agile and continuous integration 10 years ago when both of those were considered kooky by the mainstream.
I don't know how much --if any-- "mathematically ambitious" work they've had using CUDA but you could be the guy who brings that capability to their customers.
"It's like hemorrhoids, work it out with a pencil."
That's a quote from a math teacher at my high school (20 something years ago.)
Let me answer your question with a question... "Why the hell should they be allowed to use any electronic device during the test?"
I understand the open notes policy, but seriously, if you can't perform math you shouldn't get a passing grade in physics. What did we do before iPods? Were there no physics tests? Of course there were. Entire generations of students (including me) took college-level physics tests with nothing more than a pencil and some paper.
> I was so astonished by this statement that I didn't know how to respond
And that was your first mistake. By agreeing to this ridiculous statement you lost all leverage.
Some simple but effective ways of handling this:
(1) Tell her, "Let's try this again... I am going to leave the room, wait a for 30 seconds and come back in." That gives you some time to come up with a better response than "OK, I won't try."
(2) Pretend you never heard it.
(3) Tell her, "In that case this meeting is over." Turn around and leave the meeting.
(4) Ask her to put that opinion in writing. If you she won't put it in writing it means she's afraid of the repercussions from above.
If nothing else, appease her but make an ally of her boss and her boss' boss. And look for a new job.
Instead, you did nothing and you got everything you deserved. Sorry, but that's the truth of the matter.
Slashdot Mirror
I had a Galaxy S7 and loved it, but I will not buy another Samsung phone until they ship a flagship that does not include Facebook Services as an uninstallable app. At the price one pays for a Samsung flagship, one should not be subjected to the constant location tracking and who the hell knows what else that app is doing. You can disable (but not remove) the Facebook mobile app, but the "Facebook Services" app continues to run --and update itself-- in the background, like it or not. The only way to get Facebook Services off a Samsung phone is to jailbreak it, which is not a reasonable solution in my opinion.
I think Facebook is an evil organization, one that has weakened democracy in the United States. Zuckerberg is an evil genius who has figured out how to turn our basic human need for connection into something that can be approximated via software and then heavily monetized with no regard for the impact their service has on the brains or the lives of their users.
Obviously, nobody forces you to use Facebook. I used it for a while and then gave it four years ago. As a result of this choice, I will not spend $1000+ dollars for a high-end Samsung phone if it's going to serve as an attack vector for Facebook to reenter my life. No thanks.
So... I don't care how amazing "One UI" is... if Facebook Services ships on the S10 then that phone is dead to me.
The author of this "study" is correct in saying that "engineers who combine tech skills with business skills ... earn the most" but they are incorrect in placing product management at the top of their list.
An experienced enterprise sales engineer at a company like Salesforce or Oracle can pull in $250,000 a year. And unlike a "director product management," a sales engineer at that pay level is not a manager; one can hit this level of pay without having any headcount.
Why are sales engineers paid so well? Three reasons:
(1) Limited supply. Finding people with the rare mix of technical and interpersonal skills is difficult and big companies need a lot of sales engineers.
(2) Revenue generation. Unlike product management, sales engineers are on the front line of the revenue generation process. Lose all of your product managers and your sales team can keep functioning for a year or so. Lose all of your sales engineers and the revenue engine seizes up immediately.
(3) Sales culture. Big companies throw huge amounts of money at their sales executives. The top salespeople at places like Salesforce and Oracle bring in over $1M per year. Paying the top sales engineers $250K is a relative bargain.
To be clear... I didn't get any of these jobs via recruiters. I got the first job because someone I knew socially posted an update that he was looking to hire someone with my skill set. He didn't reach out to me directly because he didn't know me professionally... I kept that job for five years.
When I was ready to move I started blogged about my work and posting links to my blog on relevant groups on LinkedIn. One of those posts get picked up and circulated at Salesforce. A VP who lives near me reached out and invited me to lunch and it progressed quickly from there. I never would have gotten that job at Salesforce by applying... too much noise in the signal. I worked there for two years
When I was ready to leave the job at Salesforce I identified a start-up company where I would like to work. I cold-connected to the VP who would hire someone like me. He gave me his phone number and asked me to call him. I called him every other Friday for about two months, this led to an interview and me getting hired. Those guys went public earlier this year... I stayed a little over a year so I could hit my one year stock vesting cliff.
Three weeks after I left Salesforce I got a message from a former Salesforce SVP who had recently formed a new company. He was looking for people like me. I have never met this person... he was my boss' boss' boss, but I was smart enough to connect with him when we both worked for the Salesforce. I didn't make this jump immediately, but I did eventually leave start-up #1 to join start-up #2 and I've been there for over 2.5 years now.
10+ years of steady employment... all found via my LinkedIn connections. No recruiters were involved in any of these job moves.
If you are not getting any value from LinkedIn, that's you own fault.
LinkedIn is far from perfect and I it has definitely gotten worse in recent years, but...
I can attribute the past 10 years of my employment, across four different jobs, directly to LinkedIn. If LinkedIn did not exist then I likely would have found any of these jobs through other means.
That being said... if you get no value from LinkedIn, perhaps you should stop using it. I reached that point with Facebook several years ago and I've never missed it.
The price tag for this tiny, Italian vapor-car is $13,990, which is $2000 more than the Arcimoto.
If you are smart, skip the Microlino and get an Arcimoto instead. The Arcimoto FUV is faster, safer, cheaper and a lot more fun. It's been in development for about a decade and is not beginning to ramp up to mass production in Eugene, OR.
www.arcimoto.com
He could just stop using Twitter.
Who am I kidding... Trump could more easily chop off his shriveled up little cock before he stops using social media. But the rest of us sane people should log out of Facebook and Twitter and never go back.
It's time to start constantly trolling that asshat with constant references to all of his most notable failures: Trump University, The 3 Chapter 11 filings of Trump Resorts, Trump Mortgage, Trump Steaks and Eric.
Lets say you get 10,000 shares, at a strike price of $10 a share, with a 4 year vesting period.
Not likely. I've worked at six start-ups including one that went public and two that are moving in that direction. I was employee #80 at the one that went public, #666 at the next and #200ish at my current employer, so I speak from experience.
A strike price of $10 is not a realistic example. My strike prices have all ranged from 1/10 of a penny to $1.25. My most recent pre-IPO stock grants have been in the neighborhood of one dollar. So let's change your example to:
"Let's say you get 10,000 shares, at a strike price of $1.00"
So the $10K in debt is not likely to break most tech employees. As noted by others, the real trick is to buy your stock in such a way that you avoid short-term capital gains and the dreaded AMT.
There are at least two grammatical errors in the 27 words that LichtSpektren posted.
You are both wrong.
So run it like a business or an investment, with a budget and goals. No investor would hand a brand new CEO $2.5B... they would ration the funds over time. You could do the same with yourself.
For example, put most of the money into a well managed trust and "give" yourself $250K per year as an allowance. You could bump that amount up each year on a predetermined schedule, but you'll probably hit a point where you don't need more. Set a goal that once you've gotten married you'll have access to a one time "payment" of an additional $500,000, perhaps to buy a new house. (You might be financing part of your house... ironic, but it's all part of not being isolated. And your credit score is kick ass.) You first child is born... bump your annual pay by another $50K for each child while your money manager begins automatically setting aside money for college funds.
In other words, live the comfortable life of a trust fund baby, except that you play the role of both parent and child. You will need a reputable firm to handle the details... reach out to other billionaires for recommendations on who to consider for this critical role.
You will probably die with over $2B in the bank, but so what so long as you are happy and you've led a good life? And if you throw yourself into the world (travel, volunteering, parenting, etc.) you will likely discover a cause that you feel is worth of your largess. Don't look for it... you'll know it when you see it.
Xojo (as it's called today) is definitely worth a look. You can download the IDE and try it out for as long as you like. They only charge you for a license when you want to compile a standalone app.
I can think of two government agencies that might be interested in this...
The Attorney General of your state might take this up. In some states the AG has taken a very aggressive stance on abuses by telcos.
It also occurs to me that the Postmaster might consider this to be mail fraud. (That is, if your bill is being delivered by the USPS.)
Good luck.
Interesting analysis. How many years have you been practicing law?
I stopped watching after three minutes.
The first two minutes were like "Cloud computing for kindergartners". In minute three he referenced a Dilbert comic, which is bad. He got the reference wrong, which is even worse. (Here's the comic in question for anyone who still cares about Dilbert: http://dhansen.cs.georgefox.edu/~dhansen/Classes/DBMS/sqldb.gif)
Perhaps this fellow had some brilliant stuff to say in minutes 4-18.... perhaps not.
Helping on forums is not a bad thing, but I don't think it's an equal substitute for getting out of the house and doing real work for a nonprofit. Getting knee deep in the weeds at a real organization gives you a different level of experience than helping out on forums. Besides, there's nobody on the forums you can call on as a reference. Imagine how great it would be to have some senior person from the local food bank / animal shelter / literacy program / homeless shelter give a glowing reference to a potential employer.
Again... helping out on forums is not a bad thing, but I don't think it's a substitute for step #2.
I see this as a three step process:
(1) Use the other resources mentioned above to teach yourself SQL server and Exchange.
(2) Find a nonprofit agency in your area who needs help with their computing environment. Offer to help them on a volunteer (ie, unpaid) basis. Be sure this help includes working with SQL Server and Exchange. Be picky about this. Do not get involved with an agency where the work will not help you build your practical skill set. Also be sure that there is someone at the nonprofit agency who is willing to act as a reference for you at some point in the future. You don't have to explicitly ask this upfront, just be sure that the senior most person you can find knows enough about who you are to say nice things about you.
(3) Use this real life experience to help you land the next job on your way up the ladder.
(4) Optional: Continue working with the nonprofit agency if it makes you happy.
BTW... you can do steps 1 & 2 in parallel, ie start looking for a nonprofit while you are learning SQL Server and Exchange. Both steps might take a little time.
Seriously, do we need a bunch of overly connected people recording EVERYTHING?
What real-life problem does Google Glass solve?
I think the noise canceling headphones are your best option. You want a set that fully covers your ears. The Bose Quiet Comfort 15 is the top of the line. It's $300, but isn't four+ years of concentration worth this?
The headphones alone will not suffice, you need to pump some sound into the headphones to drown out the remaining background noise. I have two recommendations. The first is to get an app for your smart phone that sends a different frequency into each ear. The right set of frequencies can help you get your brain into a state of focussed concentration. I thought this was BS, but I spent a few bucks for an app (BrainWaves for iPhone) and found that it works for me.
The alternative suggestion is classical music, but not just any classical music. Go read a book call SuperLearning. It explains the studies that determined that classic music with certain characteristics (tempo, time signature, etc.) help people to learn. Read the book, buy some digital copies of the right classic music and pump that into your Bose QC 15s.
So not just any classic and certainly not some of that technoshit, but the right, well studies set of classic music should help you quite a bit.
Enjoy.
Why would anyone "heir" a 60 year old?
Rather than trying to become a (generic) developer, you might consider specializing in one (very popular) application. If I were in your shoes I would go sign up for a free developer account at salesforce.com. Then click on the "Help and Training" link at the top of the page and take all of the free admin training they offer. Study up for a while, then pay $200 to take the "Salesforce Administrator" certification test. All of this requires zero coding and the admin certification is a marketable skill. Go find a non-profit using Salesforce who needs some administration help; that puts some real world experience on your resume. Then go looking for some (perhaps part-time) paid Salesforce admin work while you start learning how to be a salesforce developer. This is a path that's probably not going to popular among the slashdot crowd (because it's vendor specific) but it's one possible path for you to consider.
First of all, all of you should be interviewing your (potential) boss when applying for jobs. It's really no different than the scenario described above.
Questions I like to ask:
* What do you look for when hiring {insert your job title here} ?
* How do you motivate people?
* How do you measure the performance of your direct reports?
The "give me an example" questions are largely bs because anyone can make up an answer. Ask questions that assume someone has a system for doing their job, such as:
* What is your system for managing a team?
I also like to give people homework (like reading an online article about some relevant topic). Then I ask the next interviewer (scheduled a few days later) to ask questions about the homework. If someone does the homework and is able to speak somewhat intelligently about the topic, that's a positive sign. Ignoring the homework works about as well as it did in grade school.
You might consider joining ThoughtWorks (if you can get in.)
http://www.thoughtworks.com/mission-and-values
http://martinfowler.com/bliki/ThreePillars.html
They are a global IT consulting/custom software development company with offices in 10 countries.
ThoughtWorks organizes their business around three pillars, the third being "Advocate passionately for social and economic justice." That means that the company generally avoids the same sort of work you would like to avoid AND seeks out work that will make the world a better place.
They also do a lot of cutting edge stuff... they were pioneers in agile and continuous integration 10 years ago when both of those were considered kooky by the mainstream.
I don't know how much --if any-- "mathematically ambitious" work they've had using CUDA but you could be the guy who brings that capability to their customers.
"It's like hemorrhoids, work it out with a pencil."
That's a quote from a math teacher at my high school (20 something years ago.)
Let me answer your question with a question... "Why the hell should they be allowed to use any electronic device during the test?"
I understand the open notes policy, but seriously, if you can't perform math you shouldn't get a passing grade in physics. What did we do before iPods? Were there no physics tests? Of course there were. Entire generations of students (including me) took college-level physics tests with nothing more than a pencil and some paper.
Go get a copy of RBDdeveloper Magazine (google it)... they have plenty of code and cool programming projects in each issue.
> I was so astonished by this statement that I didn't know how to respond
And that was your first mistake. By agreeing to this ridiculous statement you lost all leverage.
Some simple but effective ways of handling this:
(1) Tell her, "Let's try this again... I am going to leave the room, wait a for 30 seconds and come back in." That gives you some time to come up with a better response than "OK, I won't try."
(2) Pretend you never heard it.
(3) Tell her, "In that case this meeting is over." Turn around and leave the meeting.
(4) Ask her to put that opinion in writing. If you she won't put it in writing it means she's afraid of the repercussions from above.
If nothing else, appease her but make an ally of her boss and her boss' boss. And look for a new job.
Instead, you did nothing and you got everything you deserved. Sorry, but that's the truth of the matter.