"I've been in high tech for 30 years, and I've been laid off many times, most often from failed start ups. I _strongly_ disagree with a fully cynical response of working only to contract, leveraging job offers for raises, etc."
I've been in tech for 15 years and twice was enough for me. I now take on multiple contracts at the same time and make way more than I ever did as a regular employee.
I also won't work for startups as a full-time salaried employee anymore. They will always try to squeeze the hours out of you because they are usually trying to make a fast approaching deadline to get that next round of funding.
I had a well paying 6 month contract last summer and they wanted to hire me as a full-time, salaried employee. The problem was that I worked closely with their salaried employees and they were always overworked (many working on multiple teams) and working long hours on extremely tight deadlines.
The space was also over-saturated and when I researched the company, they were not turning a profit after a couple of years and continuing to take on rounds of funding.
When I refused the offer and wanted to continue as a contractor, they cut off all contact with me and I haven't heard from them since. It really showed me that they just wanted to overwork me and not pay.
How do you define “good”? When I looked at contract work briefly in 2023 and 2024, contract rates for enterprise dev and the type of work you find on Indeed was around $60-$80/hour W2. Which is really on the low to median end of even enterprise dev once you take into account no paid PTO, no health insurance, and you can’t even count on working 1800 hours a year.
This is also why all of the auto union are against electric cars. Some person working in their garage will no longer be able to work on cars and get a job as a mechanic/technician and instead will need to have the experience of an engineer.
It's very similar to the horse/buggy and car arguments of years past.
My education is via YouTube and downloaded service manual, and I’m able to maintain my modern ICE car just fine. My hybrid scares me though. High voltage controlled by computers is nothing to play with.
There is a disconnect. And information on how to properly insulate and isolate away from the voltages that you may be dealing is also easily found.
It requires maybe a bit of research but it's not impossible.
Are you also able to rebuild your engine and transmission? Service every sensor on board your car? Have access to a diagnostic computer and dicern those codes?
"The raids are taking place in deep blue cities in blue states. These are places that voted heavily against Trump."
It's taking place in 'sanctuary cities' where the Mayors/government specifically said they would not deport people in the US illegally and these just happened to be deep blue.
It's happening suddenly because nothing has been done about illegal immigration for years.
Every other country deports illegal immigrants, and the US should be no different.
Calling it an 'Escalation of cold Civil war' is nuts. Saying this just shows that it was supported all along.
>except that US economy relies heavily of on cheap labor of illegal immigrants who pay more in taxes than most americans
By this logic the US ought to import anyone anywhere to enter and work in the US, in endless numbers, without limit, surely causing the US tax revenue to zoom to the sky. Congratulations on inventing the infinite money machine.
(The first slaveholders, however many thousands of years ago, also thought that they had invented an infinite resource-production method.)
if you did not get the memo people currently running the show in america think that white people are retarted and we need immigrants to come to fill all these positions we can’t find qualified americans (cause you know, we are all retarded). so you are on the right track whats about to be happening… few planes will take off carrying illegal immigrants and you’ll see social media posts about how they are keeping promises (albeit 1% maybe of the promises) while at the same time bringing in 100’s of thousands immigrants to replace you :)
I agree. Sanctuary cities are dangerous not just to themselves, which to me would be fine... if that's what you want to do, go for it. But it affects the entire country and every one around them.
It's amazing to me that people on the left find it perfectly fine to force US citizens to get a vaccination, many going so far as to saying that anyone who refuses should be held down and forcibly injected. For the good of everyone else.
But, they also on the other hand refuse to enforce national laws, other laws that can also greatly impact others around them. Criminals being let go on purpose to commit crimes again. There have been people murdered by illegal immigrants that have committed many crimes, caught and released, caught and released multiple times. Do they not feel some responsibility for this?
How can on one hand you want to force a COVID vaccination into someone that has been proven can't stop the spread, but you don't want to punish a repeat offender?
Nor do they care if immigrants come in without a vaccination, or ever get one.
But you do notice that he isn’t doing the raids in red states that are close to the border that would negatively affect their businesses and economies?
> There have been people murdered by illegal immigrants that have committed many crimes
Yet he just pardoned 1500 people who invaded government buildings and threatened violence on his own VP…
Because the actions are against convicted violent criminals, with "red notices" as a priority.
"Why doesn't Trump deport violent offenders here illegally from Red States?" Because most Red States don't tolerate violent offenders here illegally. Blue states specifically, vociferously, and at great taxpayer expense, do.
> Sanctuary cities are dangerous not just to themselves, which to me would be fine... if that's what you want to do, go for it. But it affects the entire country and every one around them.
Actually: sanctuary cities aren’t dangerous, to themselves or to others.
It's amazing to me that people on the left find it perfectly fine to force US citizens to get a vaccination, many going so far as to saying that anyone who refuses should be held down and forcibly injected
you mean on the right, right? our new President was President during Covid who locked up us and our children for months and was tauting vaccine development like it was a porn star he was about to fuck while his wife is pregnant. Here’s “leftist” DeSantis with his thoughts, can send you 100 more “leftists” as well in case you really have short memory
I think it depends on how you earn it. If it's a lotto scenario where you made millions of dollars by chance and you don't have an other passions in your life, you will probably end up miserable.
I'm not rich, but I am comfortable and making more money than I never have.
It buys me the freedom from a regular 9-5, which I've despised since I started working.
Many years ago, I created a 'gold hack' for fun for a popular game when I was in highschool. I reverse-engineered the 'encrypted' (which was basic letter shifting) password stored for the account and my hack basically just decrypted the password and emailed me the username/password.
I got 100s of accounts, but never really did anything with them.
"Anytime Bill Gates comes up, I feel the need to remind people that he has spent billions in “philanthropy” to destroy the public school system. He is a his backer of charter schools."
Many public schools are shit and I applaud his effort to come with alternatives instead of forcing everyone to get a poor education, until these problems are actually fixed.
That's by design. It's a strategy pioneered by Ronald Reagan called "starve the beast" [1]. Basically, you starve a public institution of funds and then use the inevitable failure for gutting it entirely and likely privatizing it.
We're seeing this in real-time in Texas [2] in particular with Abbott's takeover of the Houston ISD and the blatant corruption and racism going on with the Keller ISD.
Also, charter schools aren't cheaper either. They cherry pick students. Public schools don't have that luxury.
> That's by design. It's a strategy pioneered by Ronald Reagan called "starve the beast" [1]. Basically, you starve a public institution of funds and then use the inevitable failure for gutting it entirely and likely privatizing it.
I’d argue that if public schools across the board were doing their job and educating students then there wouldn’t be anything to starve.
> Also, charter schools aren't cheaper either. They cherry pick students. Public schools don't have that luxury.
My kids have gone to one of the bigger charter school chains in my city for around a decade and this is not true. They employ lots of specialists to assist struggling students like my youngest. I’m not sure if they would tolerate the worst troublemakers at public schools but I also don’t think those children’s parents would be looking at better options for education.
"charter schools aren't cheaper either. They cherry pick students"
The schools in my area have a lottery system. My daughter got in, but we ended up keeping her in public schools, which are still really good. This would have at least given us a choice if the schools were terrible.
Many of the students in our charter schools come from terrible districts and those students would otherwise not get a good education. The reason the districts are terrible? Local corruption. They get more money than ever and they always seem to have a short fall at the end of the year.
The public school funding models in the USA are variable, even by county, they can't be controlled or set by the top down, and the fact that the USA spends more than the OECD average disputes everything you are saying.
> On average across OECD countries, USD 11 900 is spent per primary school student per year. For higher levels of education, spending increases: USD 13 300 is spent per secondary school student, while USD 20 500 is spent per tertiary student. This reflects that fact that higher levels of education often require teachers to have more advanced qualifications and specialised knowledge, which are usually accompanied by higher salaries.
Don't confuse your misunderstanding of their comment as anything else.
Further, the $ amount spent per student in the US has almost universally never gone done since the 1950s. It has always gone up. Don't even need to include tertiary education in this calculation.
Years ago when I was single, I used sites like match.com and would only pay one month at a time when I saw someone interesting. I probably got responses 75% of the time, many dates over the years, and a couple of long-term girlfriends.
I treated it like a marketing campaign (for myself): I would have an interesting subject line to get an initial read, a message that showed I actually read their profile, and a few ice-breaker questions. I also wouldn't just spam any woman I found.
I didn't end up meeting my wife there. It was nice for awhile, but it's difficult to find someone you are compatible with long-term when you are essentially just dating random people and hoping you have similar interests.
My wife and I met through a meetup group and I knew her for about 5 years before we started dating.
That might be true. But the answer isn’t hiring someone with no real world experience. I would hire an entry level developer before I would hire an entry level security person.
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