I generally agree with you, but allow me to play devil's advocate on one point. It may be there's been a shift and today's developers differ from their predecessors in that they aren't going to be happy staying at even the ideal company for more than 2-3 years. If that's the case, then it's not simply a matter of paying them more. "Everybody has his price," you might say, but not when the competition is offering the same thing. It is not possible for every company to offer above-market wages; at that point they cease to be "above market". It may be that this is the new reality for hiring managers. That is to say, even if they do everything right (e.g. above average compensation, developers are respected, good work environment, high quality hardware and tools, wise and effective management, scheduled pay increases, etc.) their developers will still "get bored" and bail after 2-3 years. Just plan for it.
Second thought on loyalty: I've worked at very large companies (IBM) and 8 person startups. IBM is the only place that actually gave me a raise. The startups seem to assume you're only going to be there for 2-3 years max so they don't bump your compensation. On the other hand, every time I've switched positions (including after having been laid off) the new place paid more than the old. At this point it seems like the only time I ever get a raise is when I change jobs.
I'm a senior dev working in Austin. Just ran my salary through some cost-of-living calculators vs. NYC and San Jose. One says I'd need to earn 1.55x my current salary to live comparably in NYC. A second calculator says 2.27x for Manhattan, 1.90x for Brooklyn and 1.66x for Queens. The second one also claims 1.63x for San Jose.
Nissan Leaf does 0-60 in 7.0 seconds. Chevy Volt does 0-60 in 8.5 seconds. Tesla made a conscious decision to build some performance acceleration into their car. It fits into the "sports luxury sedan" niche. That's a niche marketed toward people of means, hence my description of it as a rich person's toy. It's not a car one would buy for purely practical reasons.
The article quoted 0-60 in 4.4 for the Tesla. That's what they were referencing. On that single metric, at least, it does seem to outperform the Porsche.
You missed my point. Nobody needs a car that accelerates like a Porsche 911 or has all the luxury they've apparently built into the Tesla S. So it's a rich person's toy. Or at least an upper-middle-class person's toy.
It accelerates faster than a Porsche 911 and has other luxury features. Ergo it's a rich person's toy. That said, given the performance, the prices seem competitive, even ignoring fuel costs. From a cursory glance at the Porsche website, a new 911 costs around $80k in the U.S. with an estimated range of ~300 miles. Had to use fuel economy estimates for previous years since 2011 is an entirely new platform and the corporate site doesn't publish fuel economy numbers. My issue with the all-electrics is battery replacement. Figure you're plunking down at least $10k at the end of that 8 year warranty to replace your battery.
Much would seem to hinge on whether you view drones as making independent "decisions", like a human does, or whether you view them as simply reacting to stimuli in a fairly predetermined way. In the former case they're autonomous agents. Maybe something that "new" that might causes us to think differently about the ethics of warfare. In the latter case they're just another man-made tool to maximize killing ability and minimizing risk. Other than that they have some (apparently pretty simplistic) AI baked in, from the perspective of "killing without risk to one's self or even having to experience the horrors of war", how are drones that different from cruise missiles?
If you dual boot the machine with the big brother software, booting into an alternate OS would make it seem to your employer as if you had the system powered down, i.e. you're not doing work.
Best solution is to keep another machine right next to your work one. Leave the work one on, with "work stuff" on the screen, and periodically permute it to give the appearance of actually doing something. Unless they're also monitoring the frequency and volume of keystrokes (and mouse movements) then you should be alright.
I'd also be curious to know how this software handles virtual screens, e.g. "Spaces" in OS X. If it only takes snapshots of the primary "space" then just put all your non-work stuff in a different space.
Oh, and while you're at it, have the FCC/FTC break up the companies that are both content providers and bandwidth providers, e.g. Time Warner, Cox, etc. That takes care of the conflict of interest. Time Warner ISP becomes concerned only with providing a great network experience, without any care as to what you use it for. "Time Warner Content" (along with every other cable content provider) essentially becomes a Netflix/Hulu competitor.
I've always maintained they should align their price structure with actual costs. Maybe this won't get us all the way there, but it may end up being closer than their structure is now. Bundle their fixed costs into a fixed fee then recoup the rest in per-usage fees. To differentiate different plans based on max bandwidth, either up the fixed fee or up the per-usage rate for plans w/ higher bandwidth. Since they're now charging per usage, the telecoms have very little (legitimate) incentive to do any sort of throttling, enforcing of limits or traffic shaping.
I can understand why they have the policy, but it seems silly to complain about my having created an extra account on the machine when I could easily have escaped notice by letting her log in using my account. Basically, if they're going to let me take the machine home then the policy of "nobody uses it but the employee" is utterly unenforceable.
She uses it to watch stuff on Hulu. I created a non-admin account for her in order to mitigate the possibility of her accidentally affecting any of my work data.
I wasn't very happy with the IT guy who "warned" me about my having created an account for my wife on my work (Mac) laptop. He redeemed himself, though, when he added, "Well, I have to say that." He also seemed to agree it was preferable to my simply allowing her to log in as me.
Depends on the kid and how much his parents make. I attended an upper-tier state school (University of Texas) on a national merit scholarship and ended up paying very little. I would have paid even less if I'd opted to attend a less reputable state school (Lousiana State University, University of Oklahoma, Texas A&M University). I applied to two private schools: Wash U. (St. Louis) and Rice. Both of them would have ended up costing significantly more than U.T.
Upper tier because you can get a degree from an upper-tier state school without breaking the bank, and a degree from an upper-tier state school is more marketable than a degree from a non-upper-tier state school. It feels like the sweet spot.
Assuming your kid is capable of getting into an "elite" Computer Science program, how about instead he:
1. Goes to a upper-tier state school (helps if there's one in your home state, but not necessarily a deal-killer),
2. Does a paid internship (or two) before graduating,
3. Graduates with the albatross of huge debt around his/her neck (and with some work experience).
For an undergraduate Computer Science degree, I'm not convinced it's "worth it" to pay the big bucks.
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I generally agree with you, but allow me to play devil's advocate on one point. It may be there's been a shift and today's developers differ from their predecessors in that they aren't going to be happy staying at even the ideal company for more than 2-3 years. If that's the case, then it's not simply a matter of paying them more. "Everybody has his price," you might say, but not when the competition is offering the same thing. It is not possible for every company to offer above-market wages; at that point they cease to be "above market". It may be that this is the new reality for hiring managers. That is to say, even if they do everything right (e.g. above average compensation, developers are respected, good work environment, high quality hardware and tools, wise and effective management, scheduled pay increases, etc.) their developers will still "get bored" and bail after 2-3 years. Just plan for it.
Second thought on loyalty: I've worked at very large companies (IBM) and 8 person startups. IBM is the only place that actually gave me a raise. The startups seem to assume you're only going to be there for 2-3 years max so they don't bump your compensation. On the other hand, every time I've switched positions (including after having been laid off) the new place paid more than the old. At this point it seems like the only time I ever get a raise is when I change jobs.
I'm a senior dev working in Austin. Just ran my salary through some cost-of-living calculators vs. NYC and San Jose. One says I'd need to earn 1.55x my current salary to live comparably in NYC. A second calculator says 2.27x for Manhattan, 1.90x for Brooklyn and 1.66x for Queens. The second one also claims 1.63x for San Jose.
No idea. Likely the Porche outperforms the Tesla. Did I imply anything to the contrary?
Nissan Leaf does 0-60 in 7.0 seconds. Chevy Volt does 0-60 in 8.5 seconds. Tesla made a conscious decision to build some performance acceleration into their car. It fits into the "sports luxury sedan" niche. That's a niche marketed toward people of means, hence my description of it as a rich person's toy. It's not a car one would buy for purely practical reasons.
The article quoted 0-60 in 4.4 for the Tesla. That's what they were referencing. On that single metric, at least, it does seem to outperform the Porsche.
You missed my point. Nobody needs a car that accelerates like a Porsche 911 or has all the luxury they've apparently built into the Tesla S. So it's a rich person's toy. Or at least an upper-middle-class person's toy.
It accelerates faster than a Porsche 911 and has other luxury features. Ergo it's a rich person's toy. That said, given the performance, the prices seem competitive, even ignoring fuel costs. From a cursory glance at the Porsche website, a new 911 costs around $80k in the U.S. with an estimated range of ~300 miles. Had to use fuel economy estimates for previous years since 2011 is an entirely new platform and the corporate site doesn't publish fuel economy numbers. My issue with the all-electrics is battery replacement. Figure you're plunking down at least $10k at the end of that 8 year warranty to replace your battery.
Wouldn't this break sites hosted on a shared IP address with multiple domain names?
Does anybody really think Google would let something like SOPA get in the way of YouTube? I don't.
Much would seem to hinge on whether you view drones as making independent "decisions", like a human does, or whether you view them as simply reacting to stimuli in a fairly predetermined way. In the former case they're autonomous agents. Maybe something that "new" that might causes us to think differently about the ethics of warfare. In the latter case they're just another man-made tool to maximize killing ability and minimizing risk. Other than that they have some (apparently pretty simplistic) AI baked in, from the perspective of "killing without risk to one's self or even having to experience the horrors of war", how are drones that different from cruise missiles?
When I was carrying my laptop around in a slim jacket instead of backpack, I'd just put it under the floor mat on the passenger front side.
If you dual boot the machine with the big brother software, booting into an alternate OS would make it seem to your employer as if you had the system powered down, i.e. you're not doing work.
Best solution is to keep another machine right next to your work one. Leave the work one on, with "work stuff" on the screen, and periodically permute it to give the appearance of actually doing something. Unless they're also monitoring the frequency and volume of keystrokes (and mouse movements) then you should be alright.
I'd also be curious to know how this software handles virtual screens, e.g. "Spaces" in OS X. If it only takes snapshots of the primary "space" then just put all your non-work stuff in a different space.
Because I think that'd be a huge waste of time and resources. :)
Oh, and while you're at it, have the FCC/FTC break up the companies that are both content providers and bandwidth providers, e.g. Time Warner, Cox, etc. That takes care of the conflict of interest. Time Warner ISP becomes concerned only with providing a great network experience, without any care as to what you use it for. "Time Warner Content" (along with every other cable content provider) essentially becomes a Netflix/Hulu competitor.
I've always maintained they should align their price structure with actual costs. Maybe this won't get us all the way there, but it may end up being closer than their structure is now. Bundle their fixed costs into a fixed fee then recoup the rest in per-usage fees. To differentiate different plans based on max bandwidth, either up the fixed fee or up the per-usage rate for plans w/ higher bandwidth. Since they're now charging per usage, the telecoms have very little (legitimate) incentive to do any sort of throttling, enforcing of limits or traffic shaping.
Well, we could lose species that depend on mosquitoes as a food source. Both airborne (birds and bats) and those that consume their larvae in water.
I can understand why they have the policy, but it seems silly to complain about my having created an extra account on the machine when I could easily have escaped notice by letting her log in using my account. Basically, if they're going to let me take the machine home then the policy of "nobody uses it but the employee" is utterly unenforceable.
She uses it to watch stuff on Hulu. I created a non-admin account for her in order to mitigate the possibility of her accidentally affecting any of my work data.
Correction- they did do a standard criminal background check on me. Nothing more extensive than that, though.
No background check. No written company policy. If I ever found out that was enough to get me fired...I'd quit.
I wasn't very happy with the IT guy who "warned" me about my having created an account for my wife on my work (Mac) laptop. He redeemed himself, though, when he added, "Well, I have to say that." He also seemed to agree it was preferable to my simply allowing her to log in as me.
Depends on the kid and how much his parents make. I attended an upper-tier state school (University of Texas) on a national merit scholarship and ended up paying very little. I would have paid even less if I'd opted to attend a less reputable state school (Lousiana State University, University of Oklahoma, Texas A&M University). I applied to two private schools: Wash U. (St. Louis) and Rice. Both of them would have ended up costing significantly more than U.T.
Upper tier because you can get a degree from an upper-tier state school without breaking the bank, and a degree from an upper-tier state school is more marketable than a degree from a non-upper-tier state school. It feels like the sweet spot.
Assuming your kid is capable of getting into an "elite" Computer Science program, how about instead he:
1. Goes to a upper-tier state school (helps if there's one in your home state, but not necessarily a deal-killer),
2. Does a paid internship (or two) before graduating,
3. Graduates with the albatross of huge debt around his/her neck (and with some work experience).
For an undergraduate Computer Science degree, I'm not convinced it's "worth it" to pay the big bucks.