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Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

david.newgas.net

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Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#351

Post by consensus1 »

vintermann wrote: post #173
jfengel wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Managers love the idea that contractors can be fired more easily than employees. Except that this flexibility comes at a cost; people insist on being paid more to have an insecure job. The uncertainty never goes away. You can pay someone else to suffer it, but it will always cost more than dealing with it yourself. And that can be ok. Just don't fool yourself into thinking you're getting a bargain.

> Managers love the idea that contractors can be fired more easily than employees. Except that this flexibility comes at a cost; people insist on being paid more to have an insecure job. This is true, but it's not the whole of it. In some cases the manager goes to a cabin in the woods to drunkenly shoot at moose with the head of the contracting company. It's a saying that "the purpose of a system is what it does". I…

This doesn't happen nearly as often as people think. I'm involved in multiple single digit million contracts with vendors, and not once has anyone at our company even met the vendor AMs in person. If I choose a vendor that is twice as expensive as a competitor I am going to have to justify that to the VP I report to and "we had fun on the golf course" is just not going to cut it.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#352

Post by tverbeure »

franze wrote: post #275
RandyRanderson wrote: post #272

In Canada this is a huge scam. The government advertizes that it's funding incubators. Great, right? The money doesn't go to the start ups - it all goes to large tech companies like IBM, etc, because, obviously, IBM knows about innovation. The cover is that the government doesn't know tech so it will give money to trusted partners and they will choose who to give the money to because they've been doing such a great j…

Sounds like Europe....

Yeah, I used to work for a large-ish company that participated in projects like this.

The company has a project manager with a large spreadsheet to keep track of everything so that no employee would accidentally be officially double booked because that could be detected as fraud.

Some real work was done, but the meetings with other partners were a farce. You had these tiny companies whose only existence was to feed off the European money.

One day our manager asked if the architecture document of a 100kbps modem that I had worked on could be repurposed for a 1 Mbps modem project that was European funded…

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#353

Post by jasonkester »

zingar wrote: post #336
jasonkester wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Managers love the idea that contractors can be fired more easily than employees. Except that this flexibility comes at a cost; I noticed this early, and spent the first half of my career leaning into it. If you negotiate every gig as a contract, you get to double (or more) your salary. And the only thing you're trading away is job security which, if you pay attention, you'll notice doesn't actually exist for your s…

What happened that made you switch away from contracting?

The problem was that every time I stopped contracting for somebody, they stopped sending me money. Building software products fixed that:

https://expatsoftware.com/articles/guy-on-the-beach-with-a-l...

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#354

Post by goodluckchuck »

RaSoJo wrote: post #232
yowo wrote: post #219

I have a serious question for everyone who reading through comments: If you get a great paying position in a business that is clearly managed by too ambitious people and will never succeed, given that you are legally not a part of the potential fraud ring that you can't prove, just an engineer closing issues and merging patches, would you reject it?

I would consider your two statements as distinct and separate: > "in a business that is clearly managed by too ambitious people and will never succeed" > "given that you are legally not a part of the potential fraud ring that you can't prove" Consider: 1/ If it's a biz that's purposely mucking about without success...or a loss making entity for tax breaks: I have no problem in working here (Consider that I am in my 4…

Yeah, if you know the business is a fraud, it doesn't matter that your work isn't fraudulent in and of itself. It's like being hired by bank robbers to be their chauffeur. There's nothing illegal about driving, but if you know they're using you to get away from a crime... you're a getaway driver.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#355

Post by wrqvrwvq »

consensus1 wrote: post #349
pjc50 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related to this, the massive advantage of AWS is that it allows staff to buy infrastructure without having to raise purchase orders. If you ask permission for spending, it's a very onerous and frustrating process. If you just deploy stuff and get billed for it, it's much easier! Even if that's more expensive than having your own cloud. Worse, if you have on-prem, you have to have staff . They might even be permanent.…

There are only a handful of companies in the world that AWS would be more expensive than having your own cloud. Just the baseline costs of having 24/7 availability requires minimum 5 full time engineers (3 shifts + cover for sick / vacation). So that's $1 million a year right there, and we're already well over the cloud spend of the vast majority of companies. If you want multi region that's now $2 million. And we're…

I agree with the basic premise and math here but getting to true 24/7 uptime in the cloud will require a minimum of 2 full time cloud engineers or infra people. If you're spending another 500K in usage costs you're almost at a million. For most, the cloud is the right option because maintaining servers is a pain and modern clouds offer a lot of additional features that may be useful, but it doesn't mean it's a massive win for the bottom line. There are lots of small and large companies that could run servers on prem or in their own datacenter and it would make financial sense, but they'd have to attract the talent to build and operate, which is harder than just paying enough.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#358

Post by KellyCriterion »

triceratops wrote: post #332
kingleopold wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The irony of defending capitalism's record on human rights with that username...and I'm speaking as someone who likes capitalism.

So you are from Europe, then? :-D

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#359

Post by cogman10 »

kingleopold wrote: post #339
nekusar wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in my experience, the capitalists are SUPER OBSESSED with tallying exact numbers of dead by Communist countries. Of course in the USA, "Nobody dies due to capitalism!" It's always a 'personal decision'. Medicines gatekept? Talk to a doctor (state-controlled monopoly) Go to the doctor? Cant afford it? Go die! :) Have a nasty disease that will kill you, but pills purge it? $80k please. And insurance wont pay. Hope…

Inside non capitalist places, those solutions dont even get to EXIST. Nobody even cares about nasty disease solution and funding. They don't get invented or they are not allowed for your use, by design. This is a very narrow view and what a word salad. Now tell me name of the great "Communist countries" that exist today and they are big and have lots of great things to pursue humankind and human lifespan. I will wait…

> Nobody even cares about nasty disease solution and funding.

This is just silly.

The US has such a large lead in research output because of direct government intervention and funding since about the 1950s. That is a big part of why up until the Trump admin the US has been a powerhouse in medicine.

China is very likely going to be the next world leader in medicine. They've been investing heavily in biomedical research and they are sucking up all the talent that the US is defunding.

> They don't get invented or they are not allowed for your use, by design. This is a very narrow view and what a word salad.

That's a wild conspiracy. Governments want healthy citizens because healthy citizens power a government's economy. But further, governments are made of people and most people realize that general medical research is beneficial to all.

> Now tell me name of the great "Communist countries" that exist today and they are big and have lots of great things to pursue humankind and human lifespan.

China is the best example. Few communist countries have been able to be successful because it's been US policy to undermine them at every turn. Cuba is perhaps one of the best examples of this. And also, remarkably, even with the trade embargo of the US, cuba has a relatively decent healthcare system. The number one thing holding it back is they can't import what they need. Ironically enough, because the capitalists have decided to forgo profit because hurting a communist nation is more important than making money.

China got it's special status because for whatever reason Nixon fell in love with them.

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