09:20 – Barbara’s dad is doing better, but it’s looking like he’ll never be able to live at the retirement village apartment. It’s “independent living”, and at this point Dutch needs at least “assisted living”, if not yet a nursing home. Barbara and Frances are looking at options. Apparently, the hospital has provided them with a list of such facilities so that they can review them. When it comes time to discharge Dutch, the hospital will give them a subset of that list–the ones that have beds available–and then discharge Dutch directly to the family’s choice of facility. Although assisted-living facilities are more expensive than independent-living ones, Barbara’s parents’ actual out-of-pocket expenses may not change much, if at all. Dutch’s VA insurance doesn’t pay anything toward their current costs because they’re in independent living; if he or he and Sankie move to an assisted-living facility, the VA insurance starts paying part of the costs.
Meanwhile, Sankie is starting to break down physically under the stress. Basically, she knows that she can’t take care of Dutch in their apartment, and she’s not even comfortable with being there by herself. She’s exhausted and stressed out. What she really wants is Barbara and/or Frances to be there with her 24 hours a day, which obviously isn’t going to happen. Sankie does have long-term care insurance that will pay if she’s in an assisted-living facility or nursing home, so the best solution may be to find an assisted-living facility that will accept both Dutch and Sankie and allow them to share a room. The downside is that most such facilities have small rooms, so they wouldn’t be able to take many of their possessions along with them. Still, the combination of having round-the-clock help available on-site and being able to continue living together may be enough to make that the best option. The other option is to move Dutch to assisted-living and leave Sankie where she is. Of course, with that option, she’s not going to have someone with her constantly. Until a week or so ago, Sankie seemed content with the idea of living at Creekside by herself after Dutch dies. Now she’s worried that she won’t be able to make it on her own, but we’re hoping that’s only because she’s exhausted and possibly ill at the moment. We’re hoping that things work out as well as possible for Dutch and Sankie, which would also take a great deal of the stress off of Barbara and Frances.
11:58 – I haven’t said much about this new initiative to force businesses to collect and remit sales taxes on interstate sales because I’ve been waiting to see what happens. The bill appears to be likely to pass the Senate, although it may founder in the House. I hope so.
The problem with this bill is that it violates the Constitution on its face. States are not permitted to interfere with interstate commerce. North Carolina, for example, cannot set up a customs station at the Virginia border and impose an import duty on goods crossing into North Carolina. Nor can North Carolina tax a transaction that does not occur fully within North Carolina. If I sell a kit to a buyer in another state, neither state can Constitutionally tax that transaction, because it did not occur fully within either state. Attempting to tax that transaction is interfering with interstate commerce, which the Constitution prohibits states from doing.
In fact, the whole “nexus” idea violates the Constitution. If I visit the local Wal*Mart and purchase an item, Wal*Mart can legally collect sales tax from me. But if I visit Wal*Mart.com and purchase an item, the fact that Wal*Mart has physical stores in North Carolina is insufficient for North Carolina to tax that sale. That sale did not occur fully within North Carolina, so in taxing it North Carolina is interfering with interstate commerce, thereby violating the Constitution.
The same holds true for so-called “use taxes”, which are transparent attempts to enforce extraterritoriality, again in violation of the Constitution. If I buy an item from Amazon, the Constitution prohibits North Carolina from charging a sales tax. Calling it a “use tax” doesn’t make it allowable, unless North Carolina also charges that use tax on local purchases, in addition to the sales tax. And, of course, forcing any business to collect sales taxes (or any other type of taxes) on the governments’ behalf is prohibited Constitutionally, if nothing else by the amendment that prohibits involuntary servitude.
The only minor concession this proposed new law makes is to exempt small business with revenues under $1,000,000 annually from collecting sales taxes for roughly 9,000 separate tax jurisdictions. So, our way forward is clear. We will simply refuse to allow our revenues to exceed $1 million annually. If we eventually get to the point where $1 million in annual revenues is a real possibility, we’ll simply incorporate a second, legally separate business and split the sales between the two businesses.
13:46 – Barbara called a little while ago to say that her sister was taking their mom to the hospital. Frances had taken Sankie to a doctor’s appointment, and apparently the doctor thought she should be in the hospital. Sankie has suffered for years from recurring lung problems, and she apparently has some kind of lung infection again. The doctor talked about possibly sending her home with a prescription for azithromycin, but when Frances explained that there was no one to stay with her mom around the clock, he apparently decided to admit her to the hospital and put her on stronger antibiotics. Barbara and Frances suspected she might have another lung infection and that that was causing or at least contributing to her problems over the last few days. We hope they’ll get Sankie cured and back to her apartment soon. So now Barbara and Frances have not one but both parents in the hospital, and in not one but two different hospitals. Geez.
You think the Constitution, of all obsolete things, will constrain federal power? Your naivete is so cute! Don’t you know that in a postmodern democracy like the United States, the law is what the people in power say it is? Get back to me when the 9th and 10th Amendments are paid even lip-service.
The Commerce Clause has been stretched beyond reason by the feds. Consider the cases where the feds regulated in-state producers selling to in-state customers, on the basis that there were also out-of-state competitors; hence, purely in-state transactions have an impact on interstate commerce. By that reasoning, everything is an interstate transaction.
This new fantasy just lets states use federal powers over interstate commerce by proxy. Such a small thing. Basically the government can do any damn thing it pleases; Constitional restrictions on government power no longer exist.
Tar. Feathers. Apply liberally.
And, since we’re talking about, businesses shouldn’t be required to be unpaid tax collectors, period. But if they are, why is it that the sale is deemed to occur at the customer’s location rather than the seller’s? Oh, wait. I know. Because then seller’s in states with high sales taxes would be at a disadvantage relative to those in states with lower sales taxes.
I would actually be 100% in favor of this bill if all of the states would simply agree to eliminate all sales taxes completely, for both foreign and domestic sales? What could be fairer?
Since it is a tax “fairness” bill, why don’t local stores also have to tax you on where you live instead of where an item is sold? After all they want to “level” the playing field.
The only minor concession this proposed new law makes is to exempt small business with revenues under $1,000,000 annually from collecting sales taxes for roughly 9,000 separate tax jurisdictions.
Today, small business under under $1,000,000 will be exempted. Next year, $25,000.
The revenue will be too much. The States will be clamoring for more and more dollars. Kali will lead the charge.
Actually, to get it past the House, if they can even manage to do that, I think they’re going to have to increase the exemption to 50 or 100 employees and $10 million in annual revenue.
Funny—I just had a conversation recently, where we agreed that it was the House which was out-of-control, and the Senate that seemed to inject reason. This issue just about kills that idea.
Sorry to hear about the travails with Dutch and Sankie. My parents have both passed, so my observations won’t help me, but I can see from my aunt and uncle in their assisted living place, that just moving from one’s own house to such a place, insures—for the overwhelming majority—a significant decline in abilities.
In the short period since my aunt and uncle moved in, the rules at their assisted living have changed significantly. Previously, one had to be mobile on their own, and able to take care of their own needs, such as giving themselves shots for various maladies, such as diabetes. In just under 6 months, the whole situation has changed. They now have the staff doing rounds to support proper medication—whether pills or shots,—and the staff help some residents dress in the morning and get ready for bed at night. They also now permit people who are paid to watch the residents overnight. Talk about adapting to market needs—these have been big changes IMO.
The company’s companion nursing facility is now basically for those who are mostly or completely bedridden, or with Alzheimer’s so bad that they need to be in lockdown. In the last 6 months, I have repeatedly seen people come into the assisted living, and within a few months, move to the nursing facility (not attached, but less than a mile away). Unless they continue to get out and about, my observation has been that physical decline is quick. My former scout leader has been in the assisted living for a couple years now, but he is quite active—going on outdoor walks daily in even the worst weather, and he just got back from a 2 week walking tour in the Arizona desert; he is now as old as my parents when they passed. But most people are not that active, and fall into quick decline. Most of the people in the dining room on my last visit there, were using walkers, which was not okay there just a year ago.
Wow, that bears no relation to the standard definitions of independent-living and assisted-living facilities. Walkers and wheelchairs are very common at both types of facility. Here’s a pretty good description of standard assisted-living facilities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_living
Barring the usual accidents, severe illnesses, diseases, etc, that we are all subject to, we can see from our observations of our elders, that the best thing we can do with limited resources is stay active physically and mentally, stay close to family and friends, and everything in moderation. Our best wishes as always for Dutch, Sankie, Barbara, Frances, Bob and Colin. My own mom is getting close to having to leave her in-law apartment above my brother’s house down in MA and into some sort of assisted-living/nursing home arrangement; the falls are more frequent, and the incontinence, and the lucidity comes and goes more often, at 81, with Pick’s Disease. Brother and SIL and two nieces are finding it increasingly difficult to cope. It’s the other end of a life; whereas at two you can’t leave the toddler outta your sight, and now eighty years on, you can’t let your mom or dad outta your sight.
“Basically the government can do any damn thing it pleases; Constitutional restrictions on government power no longer exist.”
There it is. Birdcage liner.
And those getting tarred and feathered will be getting off easy. I see a future dominated by lampposts and gibbets and bursts of selective-fire.
My mom is in an assisted living facility. They will give her pills, but they have to be in a pill dispenser. The policies seem to have been consistent over the next few months.
Can’t we all just get along? We’ll tar-n-feather ’em and then hang ’em or shoot ’em. Or do the whole William Wallace thing: drag, hang, draw, disembowel, decapitate, and quarter. I don’t recommend that, though. Americans have been so pussified that they’d probably start feeling sympathy for the deposed members of the ruling class.
What’s sorta amusing about the “Braveheart” flick trying to depict the historical Wallace is that Mel is about a foot too short; like that moron Tom Cruise playing the 6’6″ character Jack Reacher. What do these casting people and directors smoke?
“Americans have been so pussified…”
Why beat around the bush? I might have gone into greater length, i.e., the country has become feminized and many institutions and organizations are run by coven-like matriarchies; but it’s worse now; the country has become infantilized. We’re all big fucking babies; the men wear the same outfits they wore when they were in the Cub Scouts and carry backpacks to and from work every day, while the women are huge fat rolling toddlers stuffing their gobs with junk all day and exposing as much flesh as possible, usually nicely tattooed.
I doubt they’d feel sympathy or anything at all, to tell the truth, on witnessing scarifying executions; they’d just keep munching on their processed garbage and swilling their shitty American lagers; wouldn’t even recognize what the hell they’re seeing. Their idea of capital punishment now is some guy on a hospital gurney with a drip bag attached to his arm.
Around ten years ago, Kim du Toit wrote The Pussification of the Western Male. His old sites are down but I found an archive copy here. Well worth reading.
And, not unrelated, look at the metrosexual who’s lied, bamboozled, and stolen his way twice into the White House.
“…look at the metrosexual who’s lied, bamboozled, and stolen his way twice into the White House.”
We’re pretty sure he’s been bisexual most of his life. And there’s even a recurrent meme around the net that the Mooch is really a guy. Whatever. He’s the latest in a list of guys who’ve lied, bamboozled and stolen their way into the WH. What I find somewhat hilarious is that he’s done and is doing things ten times worse than either Bush did, or Reagan, or Nixon, yet his prog and librul supporters are silent.
Can’t wait to see the Heroine of Tripoli and Benghazi running a campaign, and the multitudes, the legions, that will happily vote for her. I say bring it on; the sooner we get this thing going the sooner we can get ‘er done.
Ted Cruz 2016!
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/298051-reid-calls-cruz-a-schoolyard-bully
“Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called freshman GOP Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) a “schoolyard bully” during a contentious exchange Monday on the Senate floor.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/297839-gop-on-cruz-control
“Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called Cruz and his conservative colleague Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) “wacko birds” and dismissed their attempted filibuster of the nomination of CIA director John Brennan as ridiculous. McCain later apologized for the “wacko birds” remark.”
The RINOs and the Democrats hate Cruz. That is good enough for me.
I don’t believe in any of the bastards who are in Congress now or the WH; maybe a couple of the SCOTUS justices are OK but not for long. I’d hang the lot of them. Cruz is just another hack who will soon become dazzled by the wonders of Mordor, like them all, with only the two exceptions in modern times, Ron Paul and Sam Ervin.
And once again I will point out the utter hopelessness of the ongoing foolish charade that passes for our national electoral politics and our worthless and laughable voting. The late Gore Vidal had their number long, long ago. Patrick knows it, too, but is still a believer, I’m afraid.
Off-topic: SSD reference site.
I have long stopped using Tom’s for anything except daily general IT news. The site was good because the guy was good. With him long gone, there is little value add. If you want good in-depth analysis on most hardware and SSDs in particular, I would recommend AnandTech. He has been on the SSD analysis from the beginning. The providers actually listen to him as they grudgingly did with Tom because the guys actually do a good job at figuring-out shortcomes with the products.
He has a whole section dedicated to SSDs at http://www.anandtech.com/tag/ssd
Thanks, Marcelo; I’d forgotten about Anand; he was/is very good. And I hadn’t looked at Tom’s in a while. Sad.
OFD has an interview tomorrow AM for a Microslop gig locally. Going for the experience mainly. Then back to yahd and house work for the day.
Wow, that bears no relation to the standard definitions of independent-living and assisted-living facilities. Walkers and wheelchairs are very common at both types of facility.
Actually, I don’t know what the local place terms itself. The words “retirement community” is in the official name, but my uncle and cousin refer to it as ‘assisted living’ and the more intensive care place as the ‘nursing home’. The former was built by the Tiny Town hospital as a fairly independent living facility, intended only to provide dorm-like meals and housekeeping help. The original plan was to erect a number of buildings that would each have about 4 units, and a common dining hall up on the hill. When the construction got close, that plan was too expensive and ditched for a 3-floor tenement apartment structure.
In the beginning they did not accept anyone who was not fully independent and capable of walking with no more assistance than a cane. Wheelchairs were verboten—even when my aunt and uncle entered back in October. When I visited back then, they pointed out a woman who had a scooter chair, commenting they did not know how she was allowed to stay as any in wheelchairs or using walkers were not supposed to be permitted in the place. That was only 6 months ago. When I had lunch with them on Sunday, there were about 4 people in wheel chairs and a good third used walkers, including my uncle. Most of the wheelchair-bound need help getting into and out of them, so I suspect allowing those has increased the workload for the staff, as they wheel several of them from their apartment to the dining room and back. That is a change in the last 6 months.
The place opened a year or so before I returned from Germany about 4 years ago. At that point the hospital was having financial troubles. They sold out to the Catholic hospital corporation in Indy as it grew to keep pace with their biggest competitor—my university alma mater’s acquisition of other hospitals around the state. The new hospital corporation did not run nursing or assisted living homes, so they sold the assisted living place to another conglomerate.
From my perspective, the assisted living place ought to be providing therapy to patients, but the owners provide that only in the nursing home. There is probably some government-related financial reason for that, I suspect. My uncle needs therapy, as when he was in the nursing place receiving it, it was quite apparent he was getting stronger and more capable. The assisted place has a morning exercise class, but it is conducted by a resident who is a volunteer, and is in a wheelchair herself. After having been in both, neither my aunt nor uncle want the nursing home option, so the loosening of the rules at the assisted living has been a godsend allowing them to stay there.
One gets the impression that as the baby boomers are hitting their “golden” years, that many of the nursing care, assisted care and retirement living places are going to be changing as the number of potential clients doubles over the next decade. Sounds like a growth industry to me. I just realized that 1946 + 65 = 2011, we are there. The baby boomer wave (1946 – 1965 ???) is starting to retire, voluntarily or involuntarily. With or without (mostly without) benefits and insurance.
OFD has an interview tomorrow AM for a Microslop gig locally. Going for the experience mainly.
Congrats!
Get a job!
Seriously, let us know how it goes and what they require of you. I do know that as an employer who has hired 20+ people over the last decade, I respect people more who currently have a job. I tend to discount, and I try not to, people who do not have a job.
@OFD: Best of luck! I could imagine you would have the best luck with smaller outfits that will appreciate someone with experience. Maybe some company looking for a technical manager to ride herd on the current crop of 20-something techies…
Lynn wrote:
“I tend to discount, and I try not to, people who do not have a job.”
Why?
As of last Friday I don’t have a job. When I move to Adelaide I’d keep an eye open for something I’d like, but don’t need to financially. I may just do the BSc in physics and chemistry I always wanted to do. Electrical Engineering would have been ideal but I’m too old to start something like that from scratch.
Thanks, guys!
@Lynn; I do not currently have a job, and have not had one since last Tuesday. Through no fault of mine, as is true of millions who’ve been downsized, laid off, fired without cause, or had their positions outsourced or off-shored. I have a younger brother who was a UNIX engineer/sys admin for thirty years and let go without cause and has been outta work for nearly two years now in MA. And as brad infers, being older than 20 or 30 counts against us.
I get the distinct impression sometimes that we are expected to just go away, disappear. We annoy people by still being around, still working, or still trying to find work. But it’s not like we have a choice; we can’t retire. We’ll have to work until we drop dead. If we were astute enough to begin saving in our twenties and kept faithfully saving throughout our lives and taking advantage of that wonderful compound interest factor, there is still the possibility that our funds will have been plundered or badly invested by whatever organization was managing them or the entity in control of them will default and tell us the money is gone, after forty years.
Well, we shall see; most of the jobs out there want M$ experience, and AD is at the tops of their lists; I’m really just going to get some current interview experience and see the lay of the land; I don’t think it will go much further than that. Be nice, though, to have a gig only three miles away.
One of my pals was a public servant in his 20s, moved in to the private sector and got a good entry level position in the financial sector, paying mucho more than me. He thought he’d be able to retire in his early 40s but it didn’t work out that way. He’s 56 and still working, having been in and out of work for 20 years and having moved around to Perth, Sydney and Melbourne. I don’t think he ever got one of the insanely high paying positions.
Somewhat off topic, but inspired by your friend who thought he would get rich in the banking sector: I came across a report a few months ago that analyzed salaries over several decades, by industry. Historically, banks paid pretty much like any other office-work industry. Higher than manufacturing, lower than some narrow specialties, nothing special. It wasn’t until the mid-80s that banking salaries started to diverge, but then they went up fast.
Here, we are starting to see a backlash. In March, a very strict initiative passed that will require executive salaries to be approved every year by the shareholders. This hasn’t been turned into law yet, but that won’t take long. Meanwhile, shareholders are looking forward to it: In the annual meetings of two prominent banks last month, the shareholders voted to disapprove the executive pay plans. These votes were meaningless, but they send a damned clear message; next year, the companies will have a problem if they don’t seriously reduce their executive salaries.
Meanwhile, the socialist party has another initiative coming up that would restrict the ratio of pay between the highest and lowest paid person in a company to 12:1. This is a really stupid idea for lots of reasons, not least because companies will just outsource their low-paid positions, but it has a real chance of passing the popular vote.
The pharmaceutical industry isn’t much better. When the old boss of Novartis retired, he negotiated a $72 million parting gift for himself. This caused such an uproar that this was – not reduced – but cancelled entirely. And probably pissed off all of his colleagues, because this came out just before the vote on the above-mentioned initiative, and guaranteed that it would pass.
People are pissed at ridiculous executive salaries, of which banks are pretty much the worst. It seems that things are finally going to change…
I have nothing against high executive salaries in privately-held businesses. Public corporations are another matter entirely. In theory, the stockholders control executive salaries. In practice, it’s the board, which means there’s effectively no control, particularly given how incestuous typical corporate boards are. The amount of mutual back scratching is simply ridiculous.
And banks, well that’s another story. The problems started when banks started doing both retail banking and investment banking. As things stand now, investment bankers get to gamble with other people’s money. If a gamble wins, they get the lion’s share of the financial benefit. If it loses, the investors and now the taxpayers end up footing the bill.
Back when I was with Entre 30 years ago, I specialized in a PC network-based ERP package called Fourth Shift. Back then, furniture manufacturing was still huge in North Carolina, and one of our customers wanted to see what it could do for them. I was there on a joint call with the guy whose general account it was. The executives seemed interested in the ERP software, but they really wanted to know about getting some changes made to their payroll software.
They were running two different payroll systems. One was to do payroll for everyone else, and the other was dedicated to executive payroll. That ran on a completely separate computer, not connected to the network, and behind a locked door. The executives were terrified that their workforce and managers would find out how much they were paid. And, as it turned out, with good cause.
This was 30 years ago, remember. Their problem was the length of one of the fields in the executive payroll database. They needed it to be lengthened by one byte. The problem was that the existing software limited them to paying someone $99,999.99 per month. We told them we could get that fixed for them, and then just walked out of there shaking our heads. Back then, a salary of $1.2 million a year was almost unheard of, particularly in a relatively small company.
“I tend to discount, and I try not to, people who do not have a job.”
Why?
Because for some reason, they were laid off, fired or quit a job working for somebody else. And you never ever get the real story of what happened. In most cases, it is a failure of management but some times, rarely, the employee was just not qualified for the job. And you do not want to hire someone elses problem and make it your problem.
Managing people is tough, tough, tough. I cant tell you how many sleepless nights that I have had while I was thinking about how to deal with an under performing employee. I’ve got one right now and I have fired him in my head a dozen times now.
The problems started when banks started doing both retail banking and investment banking.
Banks should not be allowed to do investment banking. Period.
My 85 year old grandfather walked into his bank back in the early 1990s and complained about the tbill rates. They put him in long term bonds where he promptly lost 15% of the value when the rates went up. You do not buy long term bonds (20+ years) in your 80s.
” In most cases, it is a failure of management but some times, rarely, the employee was just not qualified for the job.”
So now we’re at the baby vs. the bathwater stage; because there may be a few bad apples, the rest of us have to eat shit. Just like everything else in this country now. The corporation I worked for just laid off around a hundred people, including three out of four of the team I worked on; so now I’m to be lumped in with underperformers and layabouts and goldbricks, etc., in the eyes of other organizational management and HR drones. I worked the equivalent of two jobs for two years and was also on rotating on-call pager duty. But if I’ve been let go, I must be a shiftless goldbricking son-of-a-bitch who should rightfully be shipped off to a work farm or chain gang like in the good old days. Meanwhile the PHB manglers who made this brilliant decision, right up to the new CEO, insist that the remaining drones should be able to do 24-hour turnarounds for customer issues now. Good luck with that. It’s at the point now in this corporation where people with decades of service are telling management “Hey, fuck this; lay ME off too!”
And those same manglers can now meet their greens fees and marina yacht berth costs, praise be to Mammon!
@Lynn; have you discussed the performance with your under-performing employee by now? Has he/she been appropriately warned? Is he/she in some kind of “protected class”? Depending on the answers I would simply find a way to get rid of them and replace them. There are many ways of accomplishing this and perhaps a page can be taken from various corporate playbooks of the last thirty years.
I agree with what RBT writes about executive compensation and the corrupt nature of executives and boards. One of my former jobs involved going into a lot of accounting databases to fix them or port them to another system or develop a custom report or whatever. Keeping in mind that most of my experience was with small and mid-sized not for profits, I saw a lot to disgust me, including padded expenses, disguised expenses, and compensation split across multiple accounting categories to hide it.
It was not only bad enough but widespread enough that I doubt I’ll ever again give money to a not for profit. Don’t believe any of the publicized numbers about how their overhead is under 10% and their pass-through to programs is 90%. Those numbers are almost certainly lies, or “creative accounting” if you want to be kind about it.
Extending my own experience with NFPs and other corporations and rolling in what I’ve heard from other sources, I don’t much believe any reported numbers from publicly held corporations or from government agencies. It’s too easy to play accounting games and distill the numbers down to soothing pabulum for the shareholders’ reports. Add in the one-hand-washes-the-other incest of professional board members and the small shareholders don’t have a clue of what’s going on and the situation is ripe for $72M golden parachutes and other abuses.
What to do about it? Beats me. An unregulated system won’t work. The current allegedly regulated system isn’t working. More government regulation won’t work. Beats me.
So now we’re at the baby vs. the bathwater stage; because there may be a few bad apples, the rest of us have to eat ****. Just like everything else in this country now.
Welcome to the human race. If people are involved, everything will be screwed up sooner or later. Like I said, management sucks. The company that hired and fired you is involved in an experiment to improve shareholder value. Sounds like that they will fail but I do not know. Here are some examples of failure possibly coming soon for large companies:
http://www.cringely.com/2013/05/02/amazon-com-isnt-killing-best-buy-blame-best-buy-it/
http://www.cringely.com/2013/04/22/the-decline-fall-of-ibm/
BTW, please do think this to be just dusting this off. I am deeply concerned about where the USA is going right now with this kind of management style being prevalent. To the point that I think that foreign salaries should not be tax deductible but I am fairly sure that that would fail also. Underemployed societies do not do well (see Rome in the 300s through 700s???).
OFD, I’ve been in the manager’s seat a couple times, and have also been the axe-man a couple times (because the boss really didn’t want to give the bad news), all in small companies. Even for someone as detached as I it’s not easy. The people I fired usually had families and needed the income and I’d worked with them for months at least, so I knew them even if I didn’t particularly like them. Difficult on an emotional basis to tell them they’d been let go. And it’s even more difficult in today’s legal climate where the slightest alleged mis-step can result in lawsuits, so you’ve got to tap-dance through paperwork and watching every word you say and having witnesses and all the rest of the stressful BS.
ISTR that Lynn’s company is small, and he’s been with it since forever, and many of his people have been there since forever. I can only imagine what it would take to tell Joe, whom you’ve known for ten years and who’s worked for you for four and who just got a new house, that you’ve got to let him go. I could do it, but it would be tough.
Your experience might be different, especially if you mostly worked for big corporations. Some of them have people whose sole job is to tell people they’re fired. What a joy that might be.
Yes, I am familiar with the good-hearted management that still exists out there and who find it difficult and painful to get rid of people. Lynn and SteveF are clearly in that category; my own experience has vastly been with the other category, and yeah, mostly huge corporations; we get the bad nooz long-distance, over the phone, in email, etc. While that’s getting done, our own first-line manglers make themselves scarce. I do not mean to attack anyone here personally in this regard; I’ve got a pretty good store of bitterness and anger saved up and my most recent experience lit it off again.
SteveF’s accounting/programming experience is interesting; I would like to see a bunch of people with that same sort of experience posting all that stuff online and in the media so we can all have a good long hard look at these bastards. Some of this has been done, but not enough to generate the level of outrage necessary to begin to effect changes. More regulation is clearly not the answer, when, among other issues, the regulators themselves are so easily suborned or simply incompetent or indifferent. Less regulation seems to invite widespread blatant piracy; but therein lies a clue to a possible solution: treat them like pirates when they’re caught. Pay accountant/programmer/sleuths like SteveF to monitor and investigate the buggers on a regular basis. Otherwise leave them alone. When they’re caught being pirates, hang the fuckers, in public. After a good flogging.
And with SteveF you get a bargain package; he can investigate them, apprehend them, flog them, and then hang, gut and chop them. Voila! Order restored!
@OFD
It’s not fair, but it’s reasonable. Look at it this way: if you’re in the hiring seat, faced with choosing between hiring a guy who’s already working for someone else and hiring someone who’s unemployed, which one are you going to choose? At least you know someone thinks the first guy is worth employing. With the second guy, you just can’t be sure he’s not jobless for a good reason.
All of that said, yes, it sucks. For you, recently unemployed, it’s a lot less of a factor than it is for the poor guy looking for job after 6 months or three years of joblessness. That guy is never going to get hired as long as there are other, more appealing candidates available. And nowadays there are a lot more unemployed than there are jobs to be filled. Welcome to the new normal.
@Bob; yeah, I hear ya. But my hiring choice would also depend on just what it is I needed; the guy outta work for six months or six years, for that matter, may have what it takes over the dude still working, no matter what his bosses think of him right now. This is especially true in the IT field; and I just had a look at that exact thing today during my interview (today being Tuesday). They have guys falling out of the trees with M$ experience and certs; but try and find somebody who also knows the big pictures, the biz end of IT, and who can not only move between different hw and sw infrastructures but can mentor and teach others in them. A guy may be a Microsoft SQL DBA but does he know how to work with persuasive SQL or flat files? Can he string network cable, ethernet or fiber, under floors and through ceilings? Does he have the deskside manner when dealing with lusers? Does he understand why the bean counters and HR drones and PHB manglers behave the way they do? Etc.
“…the poor guy looking for job after 6 months or three years of joblessness. That guy is never going to get hired as long as there are other, more appealing candidates available.”
I’ve been in that boat, too; in my fifties with a wife and two kids. Totally sucked rocks. But whether those other candidates were more appealing? I dunno; in what way? Are they younger? How is that automatically a good thing? More techie chops than me? OK, but do they know the other stuff mentioned above? Do they show up for work on time? Will they do pager and off-hours stuff? Can they write documentation that is legible and understandable? Etc. Do they speak English?
“Welcome to the new normal.”
Yes, contract workers, temp workers, consultants, drones, serfs, etc., picked up and used for a month, a year, two years, whatever, and then dumped whenever, for whatever reason or no reason at all. We have had this for a while now in IT; now move that concept over to long-term permanent employees; my team lead had eighteen years slaving for the corporation; he told me he could be sterling silver every day for those years and if some PHB mangler was playing golf some sunny Vermont afternoon up here with his own mangler, it could come down to the first guy saying “Ya know, I don’t like that Joe Blow guy; if I make this next putt; you gotta can his ass, OK?”
At the stratospheric levels of management, they either don’t know we exist at all, or they find it funny to put people on the street and watch them suffer. It amuses them. During the Wall Street heyday, we could see video footage of the young Turk stockbrokers and financiers high-fiving each other and laughing hysterically while champagne corks popped at the news of yet another mass layoff. This is the stuff of comic books now; the Classics Illustrated edition of Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities.”
The new normal is gonna be an exciting ride.
Yeah, it is going to be exciting, and this *is* going to be the new normal. The ones who will not just survive but prosper are those who are smart, skilled, and flexible, not to mention risk-takers. In other words, small businessmen and contractors.
I used to say that the days when someone could go to work right out of school for a corporation and plan to work there for forty years before retiring on a good pension were long past. Nowadays, the days when you can go to work with a corporation and plan to be employed with them one year later are already in the rear-view mirror.
From reading your posts over the years, it’s clear to me that you have what it takes to make it on your own. Perhaps it’s time you starting thinking that way instead of looking for a new job that’ll probably turn into more of the same.
“From reading your posts over the years, it’s clear to me that you have what it takes to make it on your own. Perhaps it’s time you starting thinking that way instead of looking for a new job that’ll probably turn into more of the same.”
True, that; but bear in mind how old I am. I can’t just start from scratch on something entirely new and different; I will have to build on, capitalize on, what skillz and knowledge I already possess. Let’s see: college grad: check. Choice of major: uncheck. Weapons and explosives capability: check. Pooter skillz: check. Writing ability: check. Cooking skillz: check. Dealing with wimmin: ongoing project. Biz skillz: Minimal.
I come up with: Documenting the manufacture of ammo and explosives as I cook them up and post said documentation on the net via open-source infrastructure while using business practices and techniques taught to me, ongoing, by nubile young women. Hey, this could work! Note them popular gun shows on the cable tee-vee!
I would of course seek to hire Bob as a consulting chemist and experienced business owner/manager who also knows his way around State roadblocks and obstacles, legal-wise.
Do I have any volunteer testers?
The new normal is gonna be an exciting ride.
What do you mean “gonna be”? I’m there already. Do more with less and btw, do way more.
All of that said, yes, it sucks. For you, recently unemployed, it’s a lot less of a factor than it is for the poor guy looking for job after 6 months or three years of joblessness. That guy is never going to get hired as long as there are other, more appealing candidates available. And nowadays there are a lot more unemployed than there are jobs to be filled. Welcome to the new normal.
My SIL is temp employed now for a couple of years. She asked me for advice on getting a permanent job last Jan after telling me she had turned down an entry level job at a large hospital here in Houston. I tried very kindly to tell her that she needed to take the entry level job but she did not want to hear that.
On the other hand, the unemployment in the nine county region surrounding Houston (7+ million souls) has dropped below 6.0% and is still dropping. And houses are available in the suburbs for $100/ft2 (I know that because mine sold for $102/ft2). If you are a petroleum, chemical or mechanical engineer, the unemployment is negative and the bonus programs are starting up.
Hey, I might be a “systems engineer” again soon…does that count? Ha, ha. Probably not, huh.
If that entry-level gig at the hospital had/has reasonable bennies I would have taken that in preference to higher-paying temp gigs, within reason. Like decent medical insurance coverage for starters, preferably with dental. But too many places now won’t even pay for any but the bare minimum; we’re on our own.
My most recent gig was of the “do way more with far less” variety and is now even more that way, with three out of four people gone from the team I was on. I loved it when they had me training my replacements but the frosting on the cake was when they got dumped, too. Now there are three more guys looking for work and filing for UI bennies; this sure will help jump-start the economy and improve morale for those left behind. Not to mention the folks still working whose pay goes toward those UI bennies.
What a country!
Thing is, it doesn’t have to be this way.
OFD’s situation is all too familiar… I ran my own little IT company for several years, but the lack of interest in business, in networking with people to find customers – this meant that the business just wasn’t going anywhere. In the end, in my mid-to-late 40s, I went job hunting, and it was no fun at all.
Past a certain age, too many companies figure you are just too damned expensive, and anyway not as ready to accept abuse as a 20-something. The best chance seems to be technical management, a team-leader sort of position. I’ll bet that’s where OFD winds up, hopefully with a smaller company that really needs his experience.
Anyway, I really wanted to add a story to OFD’s comment: “At the stratospheric levels of management, they either don’t know we exist at all”. In big companies, this is too true. Upper management regards IT the same as the cleaning service: something that is supposed to happen out-of-sight and out-of-mind, and is of no interest whatsoever. Even when IT is mission critical, upper management has no interest, and – this is the important bit – no clue wahat IT really costs.
As part of my current teaching position, I do a lot of little consulting contracts (the school wants all profs to stay in touch with the real world), which means I see inside a lot of companies, big and little. The little companies generally cannot afford all the IT they need – it’s just too darned expensive. But the people running the companies are usually ex-operational types who understand their businesses, and understand what IT actually offers them.
The big businesses are run by MBA types who generally have no clue about the operational aspects of the businesses they are running. It doesn’t *matter* what the business is, it’s all spreadsheets to them. At one company that I’ve seen inside of several times over the years, I watched as one CIO came in, outsourced the whole IT support business, collected his bonus for saving money and left; then, because nobody could get any work done, the next CIO brought IT support back in-house, collected his bonus for improving productivity and left. The next guy will probably outsource it all again.
OFD’s downsizing is a spreadsheet cell. Money saved, no clue what those guys did anyway. Some manager will collect a bonus for reducing costs. When it all goes south, the next manager will collect a bonus for fixing what should never have been broken in the first place.
Economy of scale is a wonderful thing, except for the fact that it enables big companies to survive being run by idiots. Give me a small business anyday.
OFD wrote:
“True, that; but bear in mind how old I am.”
I’ve worked with plenty of old codgers, some of them with highly, ah, unusual attitudes to authority. One guy had got a PhD in atomic physics in the Fifties, moved straight in to IT and never used his physics knowledge. He was okay once you got to know him, but he could be annoying. When he worked for a government funded scientific research agency I’d sometimes phone him (His organisation and mine had a number of CDC Cybers, and we rented time on theirs for a while.) He *never* returned phone calls, he figured if it was important you’d keep calling until you found him at his desk. This guy was seriously smart and could work through memory dumps without a map or machine code manual faster than I could with.
The other old blokes who’d been in steady work had really marketable skills *and* were known by people who mattered. Like the guy I know who wanted to break in to online Perl coding: you have to know and be trusted by the people who matter, being good technically isn’t enough, I’m afraid.
Outsourcing? I’m not against it in principle but in my judgement it didn’t work well at my former employer.
In 1997 the Australian government decided to “test the market” to see if IT should be outsourced. This was a lie, of course, as they’d already made up their minds what they wanted to do. So in 1999 my organisation outsourced its IT infrastructure (not including the senior managers, of course) to Evil Doers in Suits.
We sold our computers for peanuts and bought stuff back at crazy high prices. EDS tried to get the staff we retrenched on the cheap. Some took the low offers, many held out – in one case EDS didn’t make him an acceptable offer ’till the day before they took over. My favourite story from this time is when one of our IT people called the EDS Help Desk and said “I need to do a database unload.” The drone asked “What car park are you in?” At first I knew who in EDS to call to get things done, but after a while they shifted stuff around so much I had to go through the Help Desk, which added delay and cost.
Anyway, HP took over EDS and some time later we re-tendered for IT service and chose *two* providers. Now there are endless demarcation disputes and loss of goodwill from the HP people who resented losing part of their
racketbusiness. The beancounters love it but it drove me nuts and is one of the reasons I decided to take early retirement.I did a CICS systems programming many years ago, taught by the lead CICS systems programmer at a major Australian bank. His bank was contemplating outsourcing, which this guy thought was nuts. If a bank loses its IT for a few days they are out of business, and he thought the risk for losing control of IT was just too high. Of course, the beancounters won that battle.
“The best chance seems to be technical management, a team-leader sort of position. I’ll bet that’s where OFD winds up, hopefully with a smaller company that really needs his experience.”
That’s pretty much the gig I just interviewed for here in Retroville; it’s a small organization that is part of a much larger one which itself is part of a still much larger outfit, so hopefully one can still work within parameters without a lot of interference from manglers above. I will say that other members of a team and people one gets to know at these gigs make otherwise dreary jobs and days at them bearable. A three-mile commute and decent bennies will weigh fairly heavily here, if I get an offer.
Outsourcing can be a real adventure. The company I mentioned outsourced to some developing country. Remember that I’m in Switzerland, where English is a second language, and then imagine how well this worked. Someone calls the helpdesk, and in Swiss-English tries to explain the problem. The person they were talking to also had questionable English skills, and a wildly different accent. You can imagine the communications disaster.
I don’t know what was supposed to happen if you had a physical problem. The department I had a project with tended to ask me for help, because they didn’t know either, and anyway, I spoke German…
I will bring Princess with me if I ever visit Switzerland; she speaks French, German and Italian.
On a somewhat related note; anyone ever been to San Marino? Been hearing good things about the place….
@Lynn; have you discussed the performance with your under-performing employee by now? Has he/she been appropriately warned? Is he/she in some kind of “protected class”? Depending on the answers I would simply find a way to get rid of them and replace them. There are many ways of accomplishing this and perhaps a page can be taken from various corporate playbooks of the last thirty years.
I have no protected classes of people. I have 12 people so none of the nanny state laws apply to us. Yet. That day is coming when they extend Obamacare to everyone.
Yes, they have been warned. Multitudinous times. It is a case of a bird in the hand versus two in the bush. Finding above average people for this particular job is hard, very hard. I have hired six people for this job over the last 20 years and never been satisfied. Probably never will be.
Anyway, HP took over EDS and some time later we re-tendered for IT service and chose *two* providers. Now there are endless demarcation disputes and loss of goodwill from the HP people who resented losing part of their racket.
Two providers for IT? Oh yeah, that should work out well.
BTW, I just switched my personal banking to Wells Fargo. Their ATMs are freaking awesome, I can even deposit checks in their ATM and it will read the check for me. In fact, I prefer using the ATM now for deposits instead of a human being. Now that it some very good IT.
“I have hired six people for this job over the last 20 years and never been satisfied.”
Jeezum; what is the description for this gig? Next question: are the pay, bennies and working atmosphere commensurate with the job description, duties and responsibilities?
If you’ve warned folks multiple times by this point, I’d try for the two in the bush. Do they realize what the new normal is becoming? Or is that the problem….?
A three-mile commute and decent bennies will weigh fairly heavily here, if I get an offer.
Good luck! Three mile commutes are awesome, I am at 3.8 miles right now. It would be 1.0 mile if I did not mind driving through a thirty foot deep bayou with at least three foot of water in it (sometimes 30 foot of water in it but not in several years):
https://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=2007+Starlite+Field+Drive,+Sugar+Land,+TX&daddr=8653+FM+2759+Road,+Richmond,+TX&hl=en&ll=29.54322,-95.673022&spn=0.022065,0.032315&sll=31.168934,-100.076842&sspn=11.099486,16.54541&geocode=FSXowgEde1lM-imXl-MPk-NAhjFYeCPcP5UpDA%3BFcqiwgEdwz5M-ilpJl56n-NAhjH1W7Zp9cuBfA&oq=8653+fm+2759&t=h&mra=ls&z=15
And bennies are worth more than gold since you do not have to pay TAXES on them. Yet. That day is also coming.
Are you sure you’re not my wife? Nothing’s ever good enough.
Joking aside, if you’re never satisfied with the employees, possibly the problem is not with the employees.
Jeezum; what is the description for this gig? Next question: are the pay, bennies and working atmosphere commensurate with the job description, duties and responsibilities?
Sorry, cannot say in a public forum. It is a high pressure job though.
One thing that you have to remember that the unemployment rate for engineers in the oil patch is about -1.0%. Jobs are really easy to find if you have an engineering degree down here. So two in the bush is probably just tape players.
Joking aside, if you’re never satisfied with the employees, possibly the problem is not with the employees.
That is very true but it is a very difficult position to fill. Requires an engineer who does not want to do engineering. They have to be able to talk the talk and walk on water.
My average commute is about 20 feet. Not that I’m gloating…
Heh. I’m working at home, too, though that’s ending next week when I start an on-site contract.
(Strictly speaking, I’m not working today and didn’t work much yesterday. Allergies are kicking in and the antihistamines have me running a little below peak. “Drugged out of my mind” might be a better way to put it.)
Three mile commutes are awesome, I am at 3.8 miles right now.
My average commute is about 20 feet. Not that I’m gloating…
I had all my employees working out of my house for a week after hurricane Ike in 2008. Had Ethernet cables strung everywhere. Never again hopefully.
Of course, now I own my office building but I do not have a generator. Yet.
“Allergies are kicking in and the antihistamines have me running a little below peak. “Drugged out of my mind” might be a better way to put it.)”
Same deal up here; pollen from trees, new plant life springing up, people mowing, etc. MIL has it kinda bad, and I am feeling some of it; I don’t take anything unless it’s really bad. Antihistamines make me drowsy and cranky, don’t like them unless really necessary, which happens this time of year and sometimes in the fall. Nothing like sneezing a hundred times in a row and being too weak to stand up.
Lynn wrote:
“Two providers for IT? Oh yeah, that should work out well.”
The new provider, L*ckh**d M*rt*n, had some crazy software for incident management, which had its origin in hospital management. They insisted that my organisation dump our existing incident management software and use theirs. And our gonadless management went along with them. So we had to learn to use two completely inappropriate tools: Insight and Remedy.
A few people became really good at this stuff and were in great demand by mere mortals like myself who loathed it and needed help promoting code, reporting and solving problems and so on. Sacrificing puppies was often necessary to make it work. That’s a major reason why I walked out last week, I hated my job because it had become 95% paperwork.
I worked a part-time, on-call gig for a hospital down in MA back around 1989-1991 and their IT systems ran on McDonnell-Douglas infrastructure; I thought at the time, WTF are armaments manufacturers doing pushing IT stuff???
My most recent job was heading fast in the direction of more paperwork; our team lead was getting sucked into that big-time; now he’ll have all that PLUS ALL the hands-and-feet stuff that his three team members, including me, did for the past two years, new cluster builds and all. No more working from home and going skiing all winter. Them days are over. He can count on 18-hour days now and since he’s salary, no OT. I suspect he’ll manage to last another one or two years and then he’ll tell them to bugger off, maybe even before they tell him that.
The job I just had a good interview for uses the Remedy ticketing system; I hope it’s been improved since greg-in-Oz had to mess with it. Probably not, though.
And just got another call for yet another interview; shazammmm! OFD is rockin’ and rollin’ in Retroville this week!
Dave, since you have mucho experience dealing with the irrationalities of two fembots you probably will take to Remedy like a duck to water. Good luck on the job hunting front.
Thank you, sir! Still cranking away on both the job front and How To Understand Wimmen. Better luck on the former, most likely.