jeremyt

He's a college-educated electrical engineer with IT consulting experience. Why can't he find a job somewhere?

These are awesome:

http://www.amazon.com/Greenlite-Lighting-13W-Spiral-CFL/dp/B...

You've never met an American apathetic about voting? Are you from a foreign country?

With respect, and I'm not saying this applies to you, but I'm poking fun at the people throughout this thread who keep saying that these incidents should be reported to HR, or we should get HR involved, or some combination.

In my opinion, these are comments from people sitting comfortably behind their chair at insert Fortune 500 company here, who have no idea what it's like to work at or run a startup. The suggestion that said startup should go out and hire an HR consultant is equally ridiculous.

That's not to say "lawyer up" isn't good advice, because I think it is, but startups routinely hire lawyers; they do not routinely hire HR people.

My startup was almost 4 years old and well past a B round before we ended up hiring our first HR person.

So, to be clear, what I'm saying is if the problem is bad enough, you should consult a lawyer. If it isn't, you should handle it in-house with common sense and perhaps some advice from advisors/lawyers. At no point do I think it's reasonable to advise someone to go out and hire an HR consultant.

Who are all these people who think a small startup has a HR department?

My experiences were not hers, they were worse than hers.

She had a solid full-time job making more than I did, appears to be healthy, and signed a lease for an apartment on her own. By any measure that I see, her life was both more luxurious and less stressful than mine at the time.

If you can point out one aspect of her life that wasn't self-imposed and that ended up being more of a hardship than when I went through, I'm all ears. But so far it seems like all you're saying is that I can't criticize because I'm not actually her, which seems silly.

I don't need to have empathy, I have memory. I've been easily as poor as she was.

I lived a year and a half in Washington DC on $1000 per month. My living budget for working on the startup in SF was barely more than that.

I don't really care to be lectured about stress either. Living in SF and trying to do a startup was the most stressful part of my life, and at one point my doctor told me if I didn't get out I was going to die at 30. I was the sole technical founder of a startup, and I happened to have severe tendinitis in my forearms, which I had to work through. I didn't have enough money to actually get treatment or go to physical therapy, either.

This girl is so obnoxious.

When I did a startup in San Francisco in 2008, I stayed in a shared house in South San Francisco with immigrants. I was informed after the day I moved in that I wouldn't have access to the kitchen. My rent was $500 per month.

I know things are more expensive now than they used to be, but I just clicked over to Craigslist and found hundreds of listings for less than $1000 per month for a room in a shared house.

Here's one:

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/roo/5557466505.html

And that's in the middle of the city.

Here's the search...they're all over the place:

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/roo?max_price=1000

I'm sorry, but I was over 30 years old before I lived by myself without a roommate. This is just plain entitlement and whining.

I was responding to a comment stating "I don't see why intention matters"

A scientist attempting to find a cure for cancer accidentally mixes up some chemicals and causes a huge explosion which results in 1000 deaths. Alternately, a terrorist sets off a bomb in a public place killing 1000 people.

Should they each be charged with the same crime and receive the same punishment?

If you are against any use of force which could have collateral damage, then you are effectively against any use of force. That's a principled stand, but not actually very realistic.

You can't see any difference between an attack in an extremely public place that indiscriminately targets civilians in an effort to kill as many people as possible and targeted attacks on specific targets with sometimes unfortunate and unavoidable collateral damage?

That's not what he said. You're putting words in his mouth.

I can't even begin to describe how condescending your comment comes across as.

Considering the article is only a few paragraphs, and right in the middle of the article it states "dining on pork bung at your favorite Italian restaurant is improbable (most hog bung is exported to Asia)". I don't see how you have any factual support for the statement "a lot".

In fact, there isn't even anecdotal evidence listed.

It always puzzles me to hear people say that they think the social safety net "pendulum" has been swinging too far in the direction of personal responsibility.

By any measure, social safety net spending is significantly higher than it has ever been. News comes out every day of some new government mandate like paid parental leave, paid personal days, etc.

The minimum wage is creeping higher every day.

Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare spending has never been higher.

We just passed a massive, expensive, entitlement known as Obamacare, which provides (or was supposed to) health insurance to everyone in America.

Obama, during his first term, passed a massive expansion of government-subsidized student loans.

We are in the process of a significant expansion of home loans for low income and people with dodgy credit.

Except for the very limited, bipartisan, welfare reform under President Clinton (which has since basically been reversed), I'm not aware of any shrinking of the welfare state that has happened in the last 20 years.

I don't think that you have any reason to worry. Once everybody is using index funds, there will be plenty of opportunities for actively managed profits, and people will begin to take advantage of it again.

Possibly forever, and I think it's very likely they develop a chip on their shoulder because the world is not properly valuing their skills.

Never underestimate the ability of people to come up with all kinds of reasons why they are being treated unfairly.

I disagree.

The problem here is that every company has above average performers, average performers, and below average performers. However, almost everyone thinks they are an above average performer.

Therefore, if salaries are shared, at least two thirds of your workers are liable to be pissed off at what they are making, even though the amount is completely fair based on their actual worth to the company.

Which are taking their sweet ass time to find their way to consumers.

...because of government red tape.

Private firms with monopoly power never last, unless that monopoly power is augmented by the government.

The Comcast "monopoly" is in the process of falling apart, on one side from Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu and on the other side from Google fiber, 5G wireless, mesh networking, and perhaps even the Elon musk LEO satellite Internet plan.

For the life of me, and for this exact reason, I can't understand the net neutrality movement.

It's a bunch of people arguing that we have a problem and the most likely party to fix it is the government.

But this article is an example of exactly what the government does when you give them power to control things. They write in loopholes, pork, or they just flat out do a half assed job of drafting legislation. And then we see the deluge of unintended consequences

Wake up, People! The government is not here to fix your problems.

I'll give you that for the sake of argument. That still doesn't explain the stonewalling, the Fifth Amendment invoking, and the "mistaken" wiped and lost hard drives.

Sorry, but an organization that targeted people because of their political beliefs, postponed or withheld nonprofit status because of such beliefs, and is now stonewalling the congressional investigation doesn't count as "one of the better orgs in the government".

They apparently can't implement their own backup policy, can't comply with congressional subpoenas, and has generally slow walked and foot dragged through the entire investigation.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/irs-tea-party-sc...

Sounds to me the rent could be a lot more reasonable with a 5 min conversation.

Bernie's whole plan is predicated on eliminating private health insurance. In order to achieve the "savings" that he promises, he needs to be able to go to doctors and hospitals and say "take this, or you get nothing".

Without that bargaining power, he'll just push the entire health care industry private. That's already happening with Obamacare now (reference all of the health insurance companies stating they are considering withdrawing from the exchanges).

How many startups have you seen come out of Finland or Norway lately?

Perhaps you could explain the difference, because I don't see it.

source?