Thought about it, but alas laws and regs are different here. Incorporating a company means you have to put down at least $20.000 in hard cash on the table and you must use (and pay) a separate accountant, etc. After 12 seconds of sleuthing, my best guess is that you are talking about Switzerland.
All I can say is, "Wow." I would have expected better from a country whose financial systems are the envy of the entire world. Yikes.
For disability, check out IEEE's association disability policy. Individual disability policies are insultingly expensive, but they are probably worth checking out as well (better coverage, but man do you ever pay for it).
Forget about going on holidays for more than a weekend, your clients need you. Eh. I take vacation whenever I want. Never had a problem with it.
Forget about buying a house, your income isn't stable enough. You must not be in the US. In the US, you have many options including "stated income" loans, paying yourself a W-2 salary (which you should be doing, anyways), making a big down payment, going with a lender that knows how to value small-business income, etc. I had no difficult buying my home, and I continue to have no difficulty buying investment properties.
lose all your clients - I wasn't so lucky (bad road accident) It's called "disability insurance". Look it up.
So I'm telling you, after awhile all you'll dream about is a nice nine-to-five job I wish there was an emoticon that could convey just how hard I'm laughing at that very idea right now. I could never again become a Full Time Employee. Not any way, not no how.
Namely, if you have any sort of medical condition, especially of the chronic and/or cardiac variety, and This is false.
You have several good options for health insurance which include, but are not limited to:
Joining a group plan through your local chamber of commerce or other small business association
Joining a group policy through some other small business association
Joining a group policy through a professional organization (such as ACM, IEEE, etc.)
Get an employee. Two employees (yourself and your other employee) make you a group.
Combining health insurance with your other insurance (homeowners, auto, etc.) for a multiline discount
Catastrophic high-deductible plan + HSA
Talk to a competent insurance broker about your other options
Perhaps you have a spouse who can obtain coverage through his/her employer?
The biggest problem with getting health insurance on your own is that there are so many choices and so many variables that it is difficult to evaluate them all.
I haven't had a "job" in years, but I had zero difficulty finding health coverage that meets my family's needs. And that is with my wife having an expensive, chronic, and incurable health problem.
Top scale is $25 or so, and overtime is paid time and a half. Next time you work a 60 hour week, think about the fact that bus drives are getting paid the same if they work that much. This is an extremely short-sighted view of your career. Just because your "highest and best use" on 9/26/2007 may be driving a bus doesn't make it a good career move.
Take your bus driver, for instance. Top scale is $25 (how long does it take to get to $25?), so overtime would be $37.5. Let's say the average bus driver works 50 hours per week (I'm guessing here... never driven a bus) so the average billing rate for a top-paid bus driver would be $27.50/hr, and he would make about $66k/yr with 3 weeks vacation + 5 holidays.
You correctly observe that $66k/yr compares very favorably with entry-level IT jobs, but you conclude (incorrectly, IMHO), that you should drop your IT job in order to drive a bus. I say that your conclusion is incorrect, because it fails to account for your long-term earning power as an IT worker.
As an experienced IT worker, you should easily be able to fetch a job worth over $100k/yr. Now I know every year there is a news story about the 2-3 bus drivers who make $100K after overtime, but it is by far not the norm. Making over $100K/yr in IT is an easily-achievable goal after 7-10 years' experience.
For those with stronger stomachs, they can open their own consulting practices and bill their own time out at over $100/hr plus taking a cut of their employees' billing rates. I'm pretty sure bus drivers do not get this opportunity.
So, by all means, go drive a bus if you think that will make you happy. But realize that you are really closing off a lot of opportunity in the process.
Maybe mummy and daddy paid your way through rough times You don't know me. Don't pretend that you do.
Have I been though lean times? Of course I have. But I would have never accepted money from my parents. First went the entertainment budget. Then the cable. Then the phone. Then the heat. You do what it takes to get by sometimes. But I'm too much of a proud bastard to ask my parents for money. They didn't even pay for my college. I went to state school. It was a few thousand bucks a year back then. I graduated debt-free.
Back in those days, it wasn't "Oh, I'll take my highly qualified ass elsewhere", it was "Shit, please don't take my future away from me, I need this job, I'll do anything!", Well, I do not remember the days when a dependable employee lacked any bargaining power whatsoever. As an employer, I'll drop an average employee for mistake #2, but as for my dependable employees? The ones that I can make one call and I know what needs done will get done? They are gold, and they can ask for whatever they want from me. They'll probably get it.
That's the dirty little secret of capitalism that some people fail to ever grasp: you get compensated for providing value. Want to get paid more? Become more valuable to more people. Don't think you're getting paid enough? Take a good hard look at how much value you are providing.
Your name indicates you're a parent. How would you feel if your kid got out of college and was making 20,000/yr salaried at one of the few jobs that'd take someone with no experience Well, as long as my daughter does not become a stripper, then I did my job. So says Chris Rock, anyway.
On a more serious note, we all have to pay our dues. If my kids accepted jobs like that, I'd be supportive, as long as they were gaining valuable experience. It will be interesting to see what happens in that regard.
I think about some working stiff getting extorted out of the best years of his or her life, and it's immediately obvious that people should be protected from opportunistic companies that would demand something like that. It's always a choice. Nobody's forcing you to work 80 hours per week. That's the beauty of Employment at Will. The first two companies I worked for felt they owned me. I told them both to stuff it and went out on my own. Then I grew from there and started a real estate business as well.
I think about some working stiff in some socialist country somewhere where what I did is not possible. He clocks in at 9 and out at 4:30, but his life is meaningless. He wants to really be productive, but the government stands in his way at every turn. I feel sorry for that guy.
That said, I get five weeks paid a year (after 15 years service), and I somehow manage with that. My wife got 5 weeks after 5 years of service. Hope you didn't have to wait 15 years. Slavery, I say!;)
Good luck explaining to your employer if you ever have to take a drug test that you feel you don't need to do it. Well, like I said before, I have never been required or even requested to take a drug screening, but I would react as described previously. I would resign over something so demeaning, and employers are not going to let someone like me go over a stupid drug test.
Work harder, health care worse than your dog? Don't know where you get that shit. Woof woof!
Meow!
Anyhow, don't try to tell me that the Canadian system is good or even remotely adequate. I grew up in a Northern state, and you crazy Canucks are always down in the US getting treatment that you couldn't get in Canada. Don't worry. I won't tell.
At least we don't dump the poor on the street in skid row. Neither do we. I'm not sure where you're getting your information from, but I'd suggest you lay of the Michael Moore.
Anyhow, I'm glad that you're happy up in Canada. You couldn't pay me to live there, especially since my wife has some health issues. I'd be too scared that she would die on some waiting list in Ottawa.
In the US, we have what we can negotiate. That may sound scary to the rest of the world, but we happen to like it.
I find it interesting that in the US, there is not even a legal requirement to pay vacation for full time workers. Why should there be such a legal requirements? Personally, I am not paid for my vacation time, and that's part of the deal that I negotiated. I negotiated it that way because I like to take a lot of vacation time, and that's what it took to get the deal through.
Under the Canadian system, I wouldn't be able to take as much vacation, and I would be upset.
I also find it interesting that apparently down in the US, your employer can walk up to a desk clerk and force them to pee in a bottle for them. I have never had an employer do this, but if one did, I would tell him that I find the request unacceptable and calmly explain why. I would explain that I do not use illegal drugs, and that my word should be good enough. After all, they trust me with far more important things. They ought to be able to trust my word on drug use.
I would think there should be some fairness in how companies treat workers. Personally, I think the system could not possibly be more fair in the US. We have union shops, that are similar to what you describe in Canada, we have nonunion shops with the whole spectrum of corporate cultures. Those who truly require special arrangements can work as independent contractors and surrender all "protections".
I guess in the end it's all what you're used to. Personally, I like having so many options, because no two people are the same. I don't think I could live under the Canadian system, where I'd have to work harder, have worse health care than my dog, and walk around with a maple leaf sewn into my spine. Do they issue those at birth?
So, it's about fucking time IT professionals grew a spine and started demanding their rights. Eh, I don't need any of these so-called rights. I prefer negotiations.
It's not my fault my predecessors died for a stupid cause.
Do not try to make us think 'exempt' is better until you have not seen your kid for three days due to 'crunch' time. You can always quit, you know.
Besides, being non-exempt won't get you any more face time with your kid. It just means he'll have a nicer video game console and more games that you give him when you feel guilty about your absentee parenting.
I'm wondering what the impact on general salary would be if some sort of legislation was put into place. Heh. I think you know what would happen to salaries if it became customary to pay IT workers overtime.
Your hourly rate would be adjusted downward to reflect your new cost structure, and your employer would feel even less guilt working you to death because, hey, he's paying you for the time.
You'd probably be tempted to be happy about working yourself to death, too. After all, the number in your bank account keeps going up and up. Never mind that you have no time to spend that money.
Something many of the folks don't like to admit on/. is that most of the executives at successful companies put in as many if not more hours than the average worker. There's no question about that. If there's one thing that I learned from my father, it's that you make more money the more people you have working for you, but executives work 24/7.
As for me, I started two companies, paid my dues early, and now I don't work so much anymore. My father, on the other hand, continues to work 24/7. Working weekends, vacations, nights, mornings. Work, work, work. He's worked more by Tuesday than I'll work the entire week.
That's just the kind of guy he is. He certainly no longer needs to work from a financial perspective. But if he quits now, he'll never become CEO! If he doesn't have a heart attack first.
You crazy Americans with your 5 days holiday a year, 80 hour working weeks and complete lack of overtime. Well, I don't know what you crazy Brits do with your 4 months of vacation per year, but it sure as shit ain't brushin' yer teeth.
Referential integrity and unique constraints should always be enforced by the database. Why even have a database if you're not going to use it?
Perhaps I'm missing something in your post, because it sounds to me like you're advocating every application that accesses the database to enforce data integrity rules. This is a recipe for data corruption, as I'm sure you already know.
Speaking of SQL, just use PostgreSQL and you don't have to worry about stuff like that. I would, however, have to worry about becoming an obnoxious fanboi, no?
I do all my web apps as hand rolled MVC using servlets and JSPs. I've never coded myself into a corner with that. Wait until you work on a complex application.
What you describe will work fine for most any web tier (controller calls some type of business delegate that does the "real work), but try doing anything moderately complex with servlets and JSPs and you will run into trouble real quick.
What makes you think the tables are "legacy"? The fact that the 95 tables predated the Rails rewrite.
I didn't see the author say he wanted to get rid of them. Who said the author wanted to get rid of them? Only you. You don't get rid of something just because it's legacy.
If ActiveRecord has a problem using existing data in a well-designed schema, that's a serious problem with ActiveRecord. Agreed. It is a big problem with ActiveRecord. AR wants you to structure your tables "just so", and if you have a different structure, then AR is working against you instead of for you.
Anyhow, I'm guessing (wild-assedly, of course.. I know nothing of the OP's issues) that the bigger database issue here was performance. Any O/R tool is going to have trouble generating optimal SQL queries with such a large schema, and OP says that there was a heavy DB load.
What went wrong? I don't have any extra information on the subject, but my guess from reading the article is that it had something to do with the 95 legacy RDBMS tables and the many integration points with non-Ruby systems.
I mean, really. Can you imagine getting 95 legacy tables into ActiveRecord, and actually convincing AR to behave properly under load? Good luck with that.
Also, if the new app had many integration points with PHP systems, that could be a fun one to work out. You can't, to my knowledge, just include a PHP library in Ruby.;)
I've done projects in Rails, and I happen to detest PHP, but if a client approached me with the following tech specs:
95 tables
high load
many integration points with PHP
possibly more than one database? (I don't know this to be the case, but with 95 tables, I suspect more than one database)
much i18n
I would have advised against RoR.
I mean, really. Use the right tool for the job. Don't use a framework that is going to be fighting you instead of helping you.
They have an email address associated with each phone number. Why can't they send out a reminder 6 months before your number's expiration so you can renew?
FYI- You can renew your Do Not Call registrations at any time, even if they are not about to expie. I renewed all my numbers today, despite some of them not expiring for over a year.
Where's the ACLU when you need 'em? I would think a case like this would be right up their alley. Why should they agree take up his case?
Read the blog post. The guy claims to have the resources to pay for his own defense, and more importantly, the case would establish no new legal precedent (there are already two Ohio precedents that cover this situation).
The ACLU has zero reason to waste their limited resources on this case.
Slashdot Mirror
All I can say is, "Wow." I would have expected better from a country whose financial systems are the envy of the entire world. Yikes.
For disability, check out IEEE's association disability policy. Individual disability policies are insultingly expensive, but they are probably worth checking out as well (better coverage, but man do you ever pay for it).
You have several good options for health insurance which include, but are not limited to:
The biggest problem with getting health insurance on your own is that there are so many choices and so many variables that it is difficult to evaluate them all.
I haven't had a "job" in years, but I had zero difficulty finding health coverage that meets my family's needs. And that is with my wife having an expensive, chronic, and incurable health problem.
Take your bus driver, for instance. Top scale is $25 (how long does it take to get to $25?), so overtime would be $37.5. Let's say the average bus driver works 50 hours per week (I'm guessing here... never driven a bus) so the average billing rate for a top-paid bus driver would be $27.50/hr, and he would make about $66k/yr with 3 weeks vacation + 5 holidays.
You correctly observe that $66k/yr compares very favorably with entry-level IT jobs, but you conclude (incorrectly, IMHO), that you should drop your IT job in order to drive a bus. I say that your conclusion is incorrect, because it fails to account for your long-term earning power as an IT worker.
As an experienced IT worker, you should easily be able to fetch a job worth over $100k/yr. Now I know every year there is a news story about the 2-3 bus drivers who make $100K after overtime, but it is by far not the norm. Making over $100K/yr in IT is an easily-achievable goal after 7-10 years' experience.
For those with stronger stomachs, they can open their own consulting practices and bill their own time out at over $100/hr plus taking a cut of their employees' billing rates. I'm pretty sure bus drivers do not get this opportunity.
So, by all means, go drive a bus if you think that will make you happy. But realize that you are really closing off a lot of opportunity in the process.
Have I been though lean times? Of course I have. But I would have never accepted money from my parents. First went the entertainment budget. Then the cable. Then the phone. Then the heat. You do what it takes to get by sometimes. But I'm too much of a proud bastard to ask my parents for money. They didn't even pay for my college. I went to state school. It was a few thousand bucks a year back then. I graduated debt-free. Back in those days, it wasn't "Oh, I'll take my highly qualified ass elsewhere", it was "Shit, please don't take my future away from me, I need this job, I'll do anything!", Well, I do not remember the days when a dependable employee lacked any bargaining power whatsoever. As an employer, I'll drop an average employee for mistake #2, but as for my dependable employees? The ones that I can make one call and I know what needs done will get done? They are gold, and they can ask for whatever they want from me. They'll probably get it.
That's the dirty little secret of capitalism that some people fail to ever grasp: you get compensated for providing value. Want to get paid more? Become more valuable to more people. Don't think you're getting paid enough? Take a good hard look at how much value you are providing. Your name indicates you're a parent. How would you feel if your kid got out of college and was making 20,000/yr salaried at one of the few jobs that'd take someone with no experience Well, as long as my daughter does not become a stripper, then I did my job. So says Chris Rock, anyway.
On a more serious note, we all have to pay our dues. If my kids accepted jobs like that, I'd be supportive, as long as they were gaining valuable experience. It will be interesting to see what happens in that regard. I think about some working stiff getting extorted out of the best years of his or her life, and it's immediately obvious that people should be protected from opportunistic companies that would demand something like that. It's always a choice. Nobody's forcing you to work 80 hours per week. That's the beauty of Employment at Will. The first two companies I worked for felt they owned me. I told them both to stuff it and went out on my own. Then I grew from there and started a real estate business as well.
I think about some working stiff in some socialist country somewhere where what I did is not possible. He clocks in at 9 and out at 4:30, but his life is meaningless. He wants to really be productive, but the government stands in his way at every turn. I feel sorry for that guy.
Meow!
Anyhow, don't try to tell me that the Canadian system is good or even remotely adequate. I grew up in a Northern state, and you crazy Canucks are always down in the US getting treatment that you couldn't get in Canada. Don't worry. I won't tell. At least we don't dump the poor on the street in skid row. Neither do we. I'm not sure where you're getting your information from, but I'd suggest you lay of the Michael Moore.
Anyhow, I'm glad that you're happy up in Canada. You couldn't pay me to live there, especially since my wife has some health issues. I'd be too scared that she would die on some waiting list in Ottawa.
Under the Canadian system, I wouldn't be able to take as much vacation, and I would be upset. I also find it interesting that apparently down in the US, your employer can walk up to a desk clerk and force them to pee in a bottle for them. I have never had an employer do this, but if one did, I would tell him that I find the request unacceptable and calmly explain why. I would explain that I do not use illegal drugs, and that my word should be good enough. After all, they trust me with far more important things. They ought to be able to trust my word on drug use. I would think there should be some fairness in how companies treat workers. Personally, I think the system could not possibly be more fair in the US. We have union shops, that are similar to what you describe in Canada, we have nonunion shops with the whole spectrum of corporate cultures. Those who truly require special arrangements can work as independent contractors and surrender all "protections".
I guess in the end it's all what you're used to. Personally, I like having so many options, because no two people are the same. I don't think I could live under the Canadian system, where I'd have to work harder, have worse health care than my dog, and walk around with a maple leaf sewn into my spine. Do they issue those at birth?
It's not my fault my predecessors died for a stupid cause.
Dear $manager-
Please accept my two-week notice of resignation dated $today. My last day at the firm will be $today+14.
I also want to thank you for the opportunity to work at $company, and I wish both you and the firm much success in the future.
Sincerely,
maz2331
Call your human resources department and ask to be paid hourly instead of salaried. The worst they can say is, "No."
Besides, being non-exempt won't get you any more face time with your kid. It just means he'll have a nicer video game console and more games that you give him when you feel guilty about your absentee parenting.
Your hourly rate would be adjusted downward to reflect your new cost structure, and your employer would feel even less guilt working you to death because, hey, he's paying you for the time.
You'd probably be tempted to be happy about working yourself to death, too. After all, the number in your bank account keeps going up and up. Never mind that you have no time to spend that money.
As for me, I started two companies, paid my dues early, and now I don't work so much anymore. My father, on the other hand, continues to work 24/7. Working weekends, vacations, nights, mornings. Work, work, work. He's worked more by Tuesday than I'll work the entire week.
That's just the kind of guy he is. He certainly no longer needs to work from a financial perspective. But if he quits now, he'll never become CEO! If he doesn't have a heart attack first.
He's 5x the man I am, but I like my life better.
Referential integrity and unique constraints should always be enforced by the database. Why even have a database if you're not going to use it?
Perhaps I'm missing something in your post, because it sounds to me like you're advocating every application that accesses the database to enforce data integrity rules. This is a recipe for data corruption, as I'm sure you already know.
What you describe will work fine for most any web tier (controller calls some type of business delegate that does the "real work), but try doing anything moderately complex with servlets and JSPs and you will run into trouble real quick.
Anyhow, I'm guessing (wild-assedly, of course.. I know nothing of the OP's issues) that the bigger database issue here was performance. Any O/R tool is going to have trouble generating optimal SQL queries with such a large schema, and OP says that there was a heavy DB load.
I mean, really. Can you imagine getting 95 legacy tables into ActiveRecord, and actually convincing AR to behave properly under load? Good luck with that.
Also, if the new app had many integration points with PHP systems, that could be a fun one to work out. You can't, to my knowledge, just include a PHP library in Ruby.
I've done projects in Rails, and I happen to detest PHP, but if a client approached me with the following tech specs:
- 95 tables
- high load
- many integration points with PHP
- possibly more than one database? (I don't know this to be the case, but with 95 tables, I suspect more than one database)
- much i18n
I would have advised against RoR.I mean, really. Use the right tool for the job. Don't use a framework that is going to be fighting you instead of helping you.
They have an email address associated with each phone number. Why can't they send out a reminder 6 months before your number's expiration so you can renew?
FYI- You can renew your Do Not Call registrations at any time, even if they are not about to expie. I renewed all my numbers today, despite some of them not expiring for over a year.
Read the blog post. The guy claims to have the resources to pay for his own defense, and more importantly, the case would establish no new legal precedent (there are already two Ohio precedents that cover this situation).
The ACLU has zero reason to waste their limited resources on this case.
He probably could still sue Circuit City. They detained him with no reason to believe that he was shoplifting.
It would depend on the shoplifting laws in Ohio, of course, but he should at least ask his attorney about it.
Luke was quoting the Talmud, which was quoting Moses, who was quoting God.
I don't correct people's typos, but you used the word "closure" 3 times, so I'm going to assume you wrote it intentionally.
;)
You might want to do yourself a favor and look up the word "cloture".
Cheers!