TWAndrews

That's a fine moral position to take. I don't agree, and haven't seen argument from you that would convince me. Volunteer work in exchange for admission tickets is a fine offer, and there are no shortage of people who agree. Some of those become Enforcers at the event.

Free work for a weekend seems quite different than systematic under compensation in your day-to-day job.

I think this is the key thing here. This guy came on and grew into the job. He's obviously skilled and motivated, and because he built the systems from the ground up, can keep them maintained with way less effort than someone coming in will be able to.

Even if they find someone who's just as skilled and motivated, that person won't have the key experience of "I built all this" and will have to spend a much larger fraction of time on maintenance/extension.

Ultimately PA will have to hire multiple people to do all this stuff. If they're smart they'll recognize it now, rather than when the smart, motivated person they do hire starts to fail.

If I were a twenty-something with no family, I could very easily imagine really liking that work environment. There is a ton of responsibility and the sense of accomplishment you'll get when you're the person who is making everything work has to be really gratifying. Is it sustainable for a lifetime? Clearly not, but you'd learn a ton, make some great friends doing it, and eventually move on.

It's clearly not for everybody, but it's not at all difficult for me to imagine that it's very much for some people.

Wow. It's like we didn't read the same post at all.

Wow, this looks like really cool stuff.

No, quite literally not. The campaign team is a private organization, not subject to rules for hiring federal employees or spending tax money.

This is precisely the sort of shit that make people believe that the government is incompetent. It really is for certain undertakings that require some degree of operational flexibility.

Being bullied doesn't breed sensitivity--quite often the reverse.

I'll have a look--I had a quick view of trello, but it seemed like it was more task oriented than what I wanted--I really need something that lets the SEs efficiently enter after-activity reports, and provide a quick holistic description of the state of an account on a periodic basis. I'll have a look at the two solutions you mention, thanks!

The spreadsheet has a standard format, but using it means that they need to sit down at their computer rather than being able to do it on their phone (i.e. right after a meeting), and that they overwrite a previous instance of the spreadsheet, which leads to mismatches between accounts and activities, which requires me to go back to them and reconcile things wasting time for both of us.

It's possible to use the spreadsheet as basis for upload, but if I'm going to do that, I'll build my own front end too. I'm hoping to find something that will work rather than roll my own.

Yes, we already use salesforce.com, but the SEs don't have access to it--too expensive.

I've worked as an SE as well, and I'm definitely not looking to add to the team's workload. Right now they're filling out a weekly spreadsheet and sending it to me, which sucks for them and for me. I'm looking for some way to make it easier for them to enter their time and for me to look at the data across multiple weeks, either by account or by SE.

I'd definitely willing to have a look. Is there somewhere I can get a demo?

It's a matter of framing the ultimatum correctly--explain that you've got an offer, and though you really would prefer to stay, you don't see how you can pass this up. Say thanks and let them know when your last day will be--they'll either come up with the idea to make a counter offer on their own, or they won't and a raise wasn't in the cards.

For this to work, however, you do have to be willing to actually leave. If you really just want a raise, better to just ask for it--you can use the offer to explain what salaries for someone with your experience/skills are.

I've been I similar situation a couple of times, both if which resulted in substantial salary increases. The main thing is to clearly and deliberately decide what your best case scenario is, what sort of salary difference between the new job and current one will let you stay and not feel taken advantage of.

When you go in to discuss you salary with your current employer, make sure you know what your walk-away number is. During the discussion frame everything in terms of benefit to your employer.

Technically they only claimed "ACHIEVES BEST SAFETY RATING OF ANY CAR EVER TESTED" which is completely true.

The "unaware of any Model S or Roadster occupant fatalities in any car ever" is also a pretty strong argument for actually being the "safest car" too.

Corporations can't put me in jail.

It's the first amendment in practice.

No, I think that's a rediculous assertion. Journalists have choices about what the direct their attention to. Various things help them make those choices, and misuse of state power against somebody they can personally identify with is the sort of thing that will draw their attention.

It's a mistake because targeting a journalist's family member is quite likely to piss the average journalist the fuck off. The Washington Press corps can make Obama's life fucking miserable if they so choose, and absolutely drown his agenda in press about Snowden, Greenwald, how and when the White House communicated with the UK about this, and a million other things.

They can make an oxygen-sucking scandal out of nothing. This could devour the rest of Obama's second term if it gets out of hand (and the Republicans decide there's more mileage in beating him up about it rather than supporting the security state).

The public does not have to care for this to be a huge negative for the gov't. The only people who need to care are precisely the ones most likely to--folks rather like Greenwald.

If the Gates Foundation really does eliminate polio and make any sort of dent in malaria, that sets a very high bar for Must to jump over.

It's a bit offensive as it seems like it was intended, but the balance of men and women is definitely something I take into account when looking at a company I might join. An office full of just guys is going to make for a limited company.

I actually think that the current trend of "chasing eyeballs" is really valuable on its own terms.

Anyone who wants to start a business to support themselves, or their family will ultimately need customers, and as we continue to move away from the post-war era of people working principally for large companies which make things towards a services economy, a lot of people will need to find ways to communicate with their potential customers.

Lowering the cost of acquiring customers makes it much, much easier to start a new business, and to make it successful. Products and platforms that do so are generating real value on human terms.

My wife, for instance, is a photographer whose business is driven almost entirely by word of mouth, and twitter and facebook are both important components of enabling her network to share her work with potential clients. It would be enormously more expensive and difficult for her to run her business via traditional advertising, and would probably preclude her from running her own photography business.

tl;dr Chasing eyeballs makes small businesses easier to start and that's a real, human good.

I can imagine it's frustrating, but are you suggesting that the father shouldn't have written it, or that coursera shouldn't have reposted it to their public blog?

Both of those seem a bit ridiculous to me, particularly given that it's very clearly a story about one kid with a particular set of autism-related symptoms, and no claim or suggestion that coursera is, in general, helpful for folks with autism.

The press believes it is not ok, and some of them have spent time in jail to avoid revealing their sources. There are no special protections from a legal perspective, however.

I expect that will change the tone of coverage of news stories on surveillance issues.

Saturn was an attempt to do something similar--though less ambitious. It worked for awhile, but ended up subsumed by GM.

Working as a Police Officer is considerably less dangerous than many other labor-intensive professions. http://open.salon.com/blog/richard_rider/2010/11/08/police_f...

You'd think that, but it's not like they make money on the razors, it's all in the blades. Not sure why they're pushing people to move.

If you've ever read the 10-K for any corporation, they sound like there is no possibility that company will make any money whatsoever and that you'd be better off burning your cash than investing it.

They're not reasoned documents, they're a picture of the absolute worst-case scenario.

Likewise. It's not something I'd wish on anyone, though seeing how bad it was for my parents put my own pain in perspective.

I lost my brother almost 3 years ago now. I still think about him every day.