This job exists today and it is called CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) or other variants :D
An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)
61–70 of 166 posts
Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also heard the story of a digital agency that rented a huge space, painted the walls with bright colors and hired a bunch of actors to pose as employees. The idea was to deceive and close a deal with a potential big client that insisted in visiting their offices.
That reminds me of a 19th century con man I read about in the wonderful book "Bloodletters and Badmen: A Narrative Encyclopedia of American Criminals from the Pilgrims to the Present" [1]. He came to some big city posing as a successful businessman seeking investors for some new enterprise. He would give as a reference the president of a local bank located on the other side of town. When the potential investors went…
That sounds like something out of Hustle a TV show the BBC produced about a group of contract artists.
Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)
#63This job exists today and it is called CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) or other variants :D
You need to be highly qualified for that job
Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also heard the story of a digital agency that rented a huge space, painted the walls with bright colors and hired a bunch of actors to pose as employees. The idea was to deceive and close a deal with a potential big client that insisted in visiting their offices.
Villain du jour, Cambridge Analytica changed their name and rented a office in Cambridge filled with London based employees to win over the intellectual Steve Bannon https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistl...
Is intellectual a euphemism for Anglophile now?
Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)
#65Not surprising that large companies would have 'stooge' employees in place for just this sort of thing. I have heard of it happening in at least one major store chain here many years ago. Kind of reminiscent of one of the first episodes in the series 'Suits' where Louis Litt is interviewing a new junior employee for the firm, and he pulls in another junior mid-interview to dress him down and dismiss him in front of t…
I once worked with a guy who would literally “do voices” on the phone to pretend to callers that he managed a whole team of people.
Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)
#66Yes, while working a telemarketing job for quick cash secretly I encountered just this sort of thing. I had spent all of my graduation gift money meant for my first apartment right after high school and had to take a night shift somewhere. I found this telemarketing place and they had a dead simple test they used for prospective hires. My friends told me they would hire anyone no matter what. Surprisingly, someone fa…
Sorry if this should be obvious, I've read it 3 times and still don't understand this bit:
> They also did this because they cashed every last check of every employee that left and there were a lot of those.
"They also did this" - Who also did what? The candidates accepted the job? The company hired the fake guy to get sacked?
And who cashed whose checks? Did they cash them before or after they left? And why does that mean the first set of people did the first thing?
Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
or you could say we are for the most part only taking in a certain segment of the population from these countries. Educated and already middle class or higher. You are not comparing apples to apples.
Do you suppose we're selecting East Asian immigrants in a special way compared to other regions?
One need not suppose anything.
Look who has a majority of the H1-B visas or who comes here for higher education.
Those who are not educated from East Asia can't easily come to the US illegally as those who can cross overland (Mexico and central America) can. Poor Chinese villagers are not boating to America.
Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)
#68Ticketmaster the employee There's actually a good Freakanomics episode on this[1]. How tickets are undervalued and part of Ticketmaster's value is that they take blame for the high prices. [1] http://freakonomics.com/podcast/live-event-ticket-market-scr...
There are a lot of assumptions in that piece, especially regarding the motives of artists and the fan/idol relationship.
It is absolutely not a normal type market, and it shouldn't be treated like one. The way forward is not to inflate ticket prices, ensuring only the richest fans can afford to go to concerts, and screwing over the ordinary people.
The way forward is to make it illegal to resell tickets at higher than face value. That was implemented some years ago here, and scalping is a minor issue now. Fans are generally very good at self-policing and reporting price-gouging scalpers. Ticket prices did increase slightly over time, but certainly not on the level of $50 becoming $500, as posited in the article.
They do touch on that, but I don't think the solution is to completely stop resale. Just limit it to face value or less.
If artists were only interested in short-term profit, they would jack up the prices and only sell to their richest fans. But most of them look at the long perspective, the fact that there's a lot more to be gained in the long run by having a loyal fanbase that doesn't feel exploited.
For the fans who were complaining that they couldn't get tickets for low-seating high-interest events, well that's just too bad. You had the same chance as everyone else. I've sat in ticket queues (offline and online), I've furiously refreshed ticket pages for events with room for less than 100 people just to be sure to get a ticket, 5+ months in advance. I really like the system we have here, where a big wallet is not some kind of guarantee that you'll get a ticket.
If events get sold out, the onus is on the organizers and artists to either book additional shows, or come back again in 6 months or a year, possibly at a bigger venue.
If someone is a true fan, they'll be bummed about missing out, but also adamant to not miss out next time. And they certainly don't fly across the Atlantic for a Broadway show without having somehow secured a ticket beforehand. That's just silly.
Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apparently that's going to be a lot harder as the Party starts looking a lot closer at foreign work visas over the next few years.
It’s already happening. I have a friend in China and like many ex pats he had several jobs - teaching at a college, tutoring English at home and some IT consulting. He’s back in the UK now, last summer several of his ex pat friends and colleagues were busted by investigators parachuted in from Beijing. They were detained, their visas were revoked and given a week to get out of the country. Fortunately he was in Beiji…
Are you related to @wolfspider
Re: An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back when his agency was a one man band, a friend pointed out that one advantage of a trendy shared workspace is that nobody ever asked how many of the people they saw in 'his' corner actually worked for him. I've also met people who've earned temp "work" in China being nothing more than white faces in the background to make the company look international to visitors
I keep hearing this about Chinese companies but I've never actually met someone who has done this or have any concrete example beyond "oh I've heard that people do that", and I've talked to a lot of white expats in China. You've actually met these people? Did they explain any other details?
I ran into an old friend at my brother's wedding who was recently back from Beijing. He studied there and was put onto the rowing team without much active choice on his part. He took occasional jobs for a few hours as the western guy. He'd get picked up and given a briefcase to hold. Sometimes he'd be taken on a tour of a factory. Sometimes it was his job to take something out of the briefcase and give it to someone. At least once his employer was a local police officer. He said that the impression he had was that he was evidence of working with some overseas company.