351–360 of 428 posts
Meanwhile, IBM's CEO Ginny Rometty not only pocketed a salary of $1.6M in 2015, but also took a bonus of $4.6M. Not bad for 16 straight quarters of shrinking sales, evaporating profits and a falling stock price. http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-ibm-s-ceo-w...
Watson should take over the CEO role.
But just to really dogfood it, Watson should drive itself to work, too, not just hang out in server room :)
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The stock market doesn't reward investing in R&D because you can't benefit from it in three months.
I see people repeat this but it's not true. The stock market heavily rewards investing in R&D if investors think the research is going somewhere. Biotech companies are a good example.
During the dot-com bust of the early 2000s, I was working at a super-market. One of the guys stocking shelves was a software engineer laid off by a large company after 40 years. The management at Winn Dixie put him stacking boxes in the freezer section...since they knew he needed the money and wouldn't quit. Maybe he deserved to get fired, maybe he didn't. The lesson to me that has been reinforced over my career in t…
Economic downturn happens every now and again. That's expected. You cannot change it. What a software engineer should have done was to be prepared for it. I don't see any valid reasons for him to end up in a supermarket job. 2000s crisis lasted a couple of years at the most. He should have had the means to survive comfortably the temporary time period when he was without an income. The lesson is: Be prepared as if yo…
Generalize much? You know based on the fact that he "worked in software" that that he had no valid reason to need a "supermarket job"?
I hope no awful life event happens to you, but when things are going great, it's easy to say others shouldn't be struggling. Then something happens. Maybe you get sick. Or a close relative needs financial assistance. Or you get laid off. I'm fortunate enough to enjoy a comfortable living, but I've been in some really shitty situations in the past, and let me tell you- anything can happen to anybody. If you're doing well, be grateful, but don't assume everybody is in the same situation you are.
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That's assuming one has the ability to sock away enough savings to ease the burden of any long-term unemployment. The reality though is that millions of US citizens do not even have this option, even knowing full well that they need to be saving more. They simply cannot because the cost of living is too great and wages are too low. The fact that the US is "not a social country, you are on your own when shit happens",…
We're talking about tech jobs here, not minimum wage jobs that don't provide a living wage. I think the point is really that most people conflate their NEEDS with their WANTS and end up living hand to mouth because of it. If you are a tech worker in the USA and you don't have extenuating circumstances that eat up large portions of your income (like child support, back taxes, massive student loan debt, etc) and cannot…
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We're talking about tech jobs here, not minimum wage jobs that don't provide a living wage. I think the point is really that most people conflate their NEEDS with their WANTS and end up living hand to mouth because of it. If you are a tech worker in the USA and you don't have extenuating circumstances that eat up large portions of your income (like child support, back taxes, massive student loan debt, etc) and cannot…
I think your advice is not generalizable to "tech workers" in general, whose salary ranges, cost of living, family situations, etc. are all over the map. Come out to San Francisco and try to support a family of five on a $90K tech salary. Congratulations if your particular situation allows you to save for unforeseen events in the future, though.
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This is why I think learning new marketable skills should be everyone's hobby. Also, in our field or any professional field, you really should be very financially secure after 50 so that a job loss doesn't hurt you.
That's a nice dream but most people are probably too busy staying relevant in their current profession to be concentrating on learning skills for another career that may never happen.
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I think your advice is not generalizable to "tech workers" in general, whose salary ranges, cost of living, family situations, etc. are all over the map. Come out to San Francisco and try to support a family of five on a $90K tech salary. Congratulations if your particular situation allows you to save for unforeseen events in the future, though.
Living in a high cost of living area is voluntary consumption just like leasing new cars every year.
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People with mortgages and kids don't move to new places where there's more, or at least more immediate, economic opportunity? Why not? Kids are mobile. Mortgages can be covered by tenants or by selling the property (usually). I only have kid (singular) and lack a mortgage, but I'd definitely move my family to a place with more opportunity if the well ran dry where we're at now. I wouldn't even hesitate or think twice…
Kids are hardly mobile. Remember that they're kids and may not be capable of coping fully with losing their friends and familiar surroundings to a different place with no guarantee of things being better for them. Minor anecdote, when I moved from Canada to USA in my childhood, my little brother who was 12 at the time tried to run away to avoid losing all his friends he had made.
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This is my #1 worry about our industry - Zuckerberg and his folks will get that FWD.us thing passed and use to to ship cheap Indian engineers over here. Call me an asshole if you want but don't be shocked when it happens to you.
I have no problem with tech companies bringing foreign workers into the US. I have a deep problem with them being here on H1B visas that make them little more than indentured servants.
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> No sane person would take a CEO job with that type of compensation clause. While the CEO bears responsibility, the world doesn't make it easy. Wait, what? $51M salary, if I fail I give back $50M? I pocket at least $1M risk-free. Sign me up. That's more than most people make total throughout their entire lives.
Well, first, guess let's assume that's after-tax money. If that's before-tax, you end up losing money. Secondly, let's be honest. That's not really a $51M base salary. That's a $1M base salary with a $50M signing bonus that you can't spend. Because if it goes south and you need to pay the $50M back, you better not have spent it buying some nice house and other stuff. What sane person would risk the chance of going ba…