I was going to say something about salt - sodium content in our food supply - but this one kind of hit me like something hard and fast out of the unexpected area.
As some of you know, I've been out of work for over a year now, but I freely admit that my credit card woes go back a few years further than that.
A long, long time ago, when I was employed, getting raises and more or less living the high life of an upper middle class nitwit, I had lots and lots of credit. I had so much credit at one time that I found myself in a position where I was forced to face a few facts about having lots of credit. The main one is that each dollar of credit is roughly the equivalent of some measure of the amount of rope I had with which to hang myself. I had, at one time, over 120,000 feet of rope.
Needless to say, that's long gone, but the curious part is that, despite record bankruptcies and defaults among credit card holders, the issuers don't seem to get it. They think that the obvious way to make a credit card holder who has fallen on rough times, due to their own stupidity or for other, less culpable reasons, is to blackmail them.
That's right, except it's "legal blackmail." It's legal because Congress doesn't have the balls to regulate the banks and other credit card issuers (CCIs) the way they so desperately need to be regulated, and that also feeds back into the current economic mess we're in, which is almost 100% due to financial misdeeds by the banks and their owners. You know, those guys (mostly) who are out on $400,000 yacht junkets on our dime, courtesy of the Congressional sell-out - oops! I meant bail-out - which saved their utterly useless asses from the financial ruin they so richly deserve but we so poorly get stuck with.
(Surprisingly, Congress does have the balls to act like they represent us, the people, when they're kowtowing to their corporate masters right in front of us. Almost every last member of Congress does it, and that must make it right.)
But I digress.
The reason their blackmail is legal is two fold. First, it's contractual. That means that when you get a credit card, all the sneaky little tricks, fees, fines, and other assorted punishment they will nail on you if you dare to make a single payment late are all right there in that glob of fine print you probably did not read when you signed it (because you need a law degree and an accountant certification to understand it, or a bankruptcy or two). And because they're such sweet folks, they usually will give you one or two months before they slam the lid on your fingers so you may never be able to pay them back. If that doesn't make any sense to you, you're not alone.
Secondly, there used to be laws about how much interest a lending institution could charge you. It was called usury (which, actually, refers to any rate of interest, if you read the Bible). This is no longer the case. Those 30% and higher "fees" and interest rates are only that low because the banks haven't raised them again, yet. Congress took the limit off during the Bush years because the banks are such trustworthy embodiments of something that they'd never do wrong to their own customers. They learned from the Great 1929 Depression, didn't they? They're too big for that! They're also too big to fail, but that doesn't mean they can't fail, it means we can't afford to let them fail. Big difference.
What happens when you can't make the payments after a certain number of them, which ranges anywhere from 1 to 3 or more, but usually not more than 3, is that they jack up your interest rate as high as they can. These days, with savings accounts paying less than 1% interest, it's pretty obvious that the minimum high rate for those bad credit risks should be roughly the same - times 30. Why, they might never get any of it back if they don't put the screws to you!
Yes, you read that right. If you did not know it before, be assured: your savings with them pays you less than 1%, but if you borrow from them and miss a payment, you get jacked with 30% interest. That's almost 1/3 of what you owe them in the first place.
It used to be loan sharks and the Mafia that were the only ones who could charge that much interest, and it wasn't legal. Nowadays, the loan sharks are nicer than the banks, or they work for them. Okay, maybe not, but it seems that way. Why commit a crime when you can now do the same thing and get away with it legally?
So, back to the first missed payment. You get socked with a fee for a late payment. This used to be around $5 per month, but now it's $29, $39, whatever they want. It's in the contract you signed.
If you happen to be a displaced worker (like me), there's a chance your charge balance will run over your credit limit at some point, probably sooner than later. They say (yes, that infamous "they" said it) that you should never have more than 1/2 of your credit limit as a balance on any of your credit cards at any time. In these wonderful times of financial crunch, that's harder than ever, and we Americans are notorious for spending close to the limit all the time. But, as soon as you go over that limit, bam, there's another charge they tack on.
Sometimes it's not even your fault. After all, the credit limit is there to limit their risk and your indebtedness, right? Wrong. It's there to limit their risk all right, but they don't give a hoot about your indebtedness. If they did, you'd never be able to go over your limit because their system would calculate all pending and actual charges and decline anything that might take it over the top. Instead, they don't. In fact, they don't even stop charges that come in after you've gone over your limit if, for example, you have an ongoing payment set up to charge against that card. Like what? Like, oh, I dunno, maybe a monthly fee for your kids' gymnastics lessons that you used to be able to afford. As long as the credit card issuer approves the charges, you can afford it. I mean, after all, they do know what they're doing, don't they?
(Yeah, just like they did with credit default swaps, and sub-prime mortgages, and all their other get-rich-quick-and-forever schemes that we are now paying for, to the tune of $12 TRILLION and climbing.)
I know someone who, mainly because of the over-limit allowed charges, has fallen behind in their payments and cannot catch up because they're on a limited income (retired, elderly, not as healthy as once, etc.). As you probably figured out by now, they are now paying 30%+ interest on what used to be much lower rate accounts, plus $39 over-limit fees, plus $39 late fees, or they would if they had a prayer of catching up.
Some people in this situation just stop paying and ignore all the phone calls from the banks and the collectors. I mean, if they can't pay, what else is there to do? If they're patient enough, eventually one of the collection agencies will offer a reduced payment, sometimes as low as 50% of the original defaulted balance (before all the fees and interest kicked in) or less.
(If I had that kind of money, I'd pay them off just to settle the account. I've done it on a couple of accounts and it at least stopped the late payment and default reports that were piling up at Experian, Transunion and Equifax. Those are the companies that don't even recognize mercy as a word. It didn't clear the notices from my credit report, but one step at a time.)
I have a better solution. I plan to suggest this to my friend who is about to get drowned in this situation, though I doubt that their credit card issuer will take it. I'll get back to that.
Here's the solution:
1) Temporarily raise the credit limit on the account such that the existing balance is at or less than the limit. (Oh, well, no more over-limit charges.)
2) Lower the interest rate to something reasonable, maybe like what it was before it was jacked up to 30%+.
3) Recalculate the minimum payment and go with that, instead of the total balance over the limit plus the former minimum payment.
Why won't they do that? It would give the customer a shot at making good on the debt, they get money coming in again, and everyone is better off.
They won't because it's not what they are "owed." They have a contract with (on) you. They want all the money, period, so why settle for less than everything? They "can't" raise the credit limit because the customer can't be trusted not to do the same thing all over again. Never mind that it was the CCI's stupid error in accepting charges when the account was already over the "limit." Never mind that this customer actually wants to make good on the debt, no matter how it went up.
They can't lower the interest rate. That would mean less money for them. They're willing to overlook the fact that they're not getting any money on the account right now anyway. In fact, they'd rather go bankrupt themselves than make allowances to get their debtors to pay them back. That is unless they can convince (i.e. bribe) Congress to pay them out of your grandchildren's pockets by extorting it from the government instead.
Finally, if they recalculated based on the above scenario, they won't get the over-limit amount back, either. So what if they never get it back at all because of a bankruptcy or a collector's half-off deal!
Wait, I have an idea - let's blame it on those liberal Democrats! If they'd just spend money without ever raising taxes, like the Republicans want, that would solve everything! The government would collapse, free markets would rule once again, and all would be the way it once was - a world of brotherly love and peace, with the rich on top where they belong and everyone else in abject poverty and slavery, where we belong. Right?
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Fix the Problem, NOT the Symptom....
Everyone probably knows by now about the wonderful Supreme Court decision that enshrines in the law two utterly anti-human concepts: corporations are people and money is speech.
While it is true that corporations act like morons in their blind, lustful and often criminal (or criminally negligent) pursuit of profit at the expense of everyone and everything that might otherwise be worth preservation, and enough money can buy anyone a lot of speech, the bottom line here is that it just ain't so.
The trouble is that the USSC has a long history of turning what should be obvious, basic, human concepts into the most convoluted, inverted exercises in twisted logic imaginable. Rights that are embodied in the first ten amendments to the Constitution have been systematically and methodically limited because, as we progress through history, the Court seems to forget that the purpose of the Constitution was to limit the powers of the government, not outline how they could be expanded beyond all reason.
Remember, the authors of the Constitution (and the Bill of Rights) had just been through a hellish war to fight off the yoke of the British Crown and the world's most infamous monopoly, the British East India Tea Company, followed by years of failure in the form of the Articles of Confederacy.
But today, in spite of this knowledge and history, I get this message from Common Cause, which is supposed to be on our side against the corporations and the overreaches of the government:
"Are you going to allow five Supreme Court justices to have the last word on our democracy?
I didn't think so.
The horrendous ruling by the Roberts Court to allow unlimited political spending by corporations and unions requires a game-changing response. On Friday, I shared the cornerstone of Common Cause's plan with Keith Olbermann and his viewers: Pass the Fair Elections Now Act."
Yeah, that'll teach those nasty Justices - pass another law they can overturn at the first opportunity!
Does anyone else see what's wrong with this approach? How does that "change the game" at all?
The solution is to fix the Constitution so that decisions about what the rights of fictional entities are and whether a medium of exchange is equivalent to the ability of a person to say something are out of the Court's hands.
In other words, we need a Constitutional amendment, or two, to establish, once and for all, that corporations are not persons under the law and only living, breathing human beings have any legal rights as persons, and that media of exchange are commercial entities with no equivalent or legal relationship to the making of sound by a human being, or any expression of same (e.g., press, electronic broadcast, internet, etc).
Fix the problem, not the symptoms, and really fix them. Now.
That would change the game, at least for a few generations of living beings....
While it is true that corporations act like morons in their blind, lustful and often criminal (or criminally negligent) pursuit of profit at the expense of everyone and everything that might otherwise be worth preservation, and enough money can buy anyone a lot of speech, the bottom line here is that it just ain't so.
The trouble is that the USSC has a long history of turning what should be obvious, basic, human concepts into the most convoluted, inverted exercises in twisted logic imaginable. Rights that are embodied in the first ten amendments to the Constitution have been systematically and methodically limited because, as we progress through history, the Court seems to forget that the purpose of the Constitution was to limit the powers of the government, not outline how they could be expanded beyond all reason.
Remember, the authors of the Constitution (and the Bill of Rights) had just been through a hellish war to fight off the yoke of the British Crown and the world's most infamous monopoly, the British East India Tea Company, followed by years of failure in the form of the Articles of Confederacy.
But today, in spite of this knowledge and history, I get this message from Common Cause, which is supposed to be on our side against the corporations and the overreaches of the government:
"Are you going to allow five Supreme Court justices to have the last word on our democracy?
I didn't think so.
The horrendous ruling by the Roberts Court to allow unlimited political spending by corporations and unions requires a game-changing response. On Friday, I shared the cornerstone of Common Cause's plan with Keith Olbermann and his viewers: Pass the Fair Elections Now Act."
Yeah, that'll teach those nasty Justices - pass another law they can overturn at the first opportunity!
Does anyone else see what's wrong with this approach? How does that "change the game" at all?
The solution is to fix the Constitution so that decisions about what the rights of fictional entities are and whether a medium of exchange is equivalent to the ability of a person to say something are out of the Court's hands.
In other words, we need a Constitutional amendment, or two, to establish, once and for all, that corporations are not persons under the law and only living, breathing human beings have any legal rights as persons, and that media of exchange are commercial entities with no equivalent or legal relationship to the making of sound by a human being, or any expression of same (e.g., press, electronic broadcast, internet, etc).
Fix the problem, not the symptoms, and really fix them. Now.
That would change the game, at least for a few generations of living beings....
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Employment Opportunities
I've been unemployed now for more than a year, and I've been meaning to say something about this for a few weeks now. Actually, this subject is one that inspired me to create a blog to share with all you fans, interested people, enemies and so on.
One of the great things about being unemployed is that I have been privileged to see lots and lots of job openings and how they're written, and why they don't work. I can tell you right here that the main reason they don't work is that they are not written for the job seeker at all, they're mostly written from the employer's HR perspective, and that really hurts.
For one thing, we seekers are looking for something that describes a position where we would feel competent, capable, contributory and challenged to do well. Most of the job descriptions I've seen are so idealistic that they would not be available at all if the ideal candidate existed. (In other words, if that employer could find a candidate like that, they would already be employed and not looking for a job.)
I say this because I've seen a whole lot of job openings that are easily jobs where I could perform well and contribute a lot, and with over 30 years in my field now, I can learn what I don't already know. But most of the job descriptions are written as if the candidate has to fit perfectly, and my take on that is - if that person existed, they wouldn't be looking at the description to find a new job, they'd already have it.
I should probably also say that I have yet to find a job description that fits me that well, but, then, I'm not employed, either.
I'm going to go through a few actual job postings I've seen right here, so I can make it clear what I'm saying and you, the employer or seeker reading this blog, will have no trouble understanding what I mean.
These are actual job listings taken from CalJobs, LinkedIn and a few other places, with names and other unique identifiers removed so as not to make it too obvious who goofed (especially if that would be me).
Here's one from LinkedIn:
"Looking for talented PHP developer - for company in Israel 2+ years experience"
This is one I like: it tells me what the company is looking for and where it's located, right up front. In fact, most of the postings I've seen on LinkedIn are really good. The ones that are not either don't include the location or have other deficiencies in common with the rest, which I will now proceed to cover.
I'm registered for searches at CalJobs, a free job listing service provided by the California Employment Development Department, with a resume built in their system using their forms, designed to get me a job in software development in C or C++ on UNIX or Linux systems, applications server-side or system level (except that I don't do device drivers, but there's no way to say that), OR providing PC services. Their search engine doesn't have a lot of flexibility, so my primary area of focus is software applications development.
Here are four from CalJobs:
(Column four is the rate of pay, if you didn't guess....)
These aren't too bad, although the job titles are kind of bland and unrevealing. Let's take a closer look at the job descriptions themselves.
COMPUTER SOFTWARE ENGINEER
"Providing pre-sales technical and business support Work closely with Sales Delivery Teams Manage project timelines, scope, budget, risk and resource allocation and scheduling Help Project teams and assist resources in the technical development Manage POCs Conduct Presentations and demos Participate in information gathering, define work problems, and design programs and procedures to resolve problems. Gather, understand and document client requirements. Prepare for and actively participate in client meetings when required Other Build a Microsoft Business Intelligence Practice working under the auspices of the BI Program Manager"
(The format is also an artifact of the CalJobs system - it's pretty flat and, thus, a little tricky to read, but that's not what wrong with this entry.)
To begin with, a software engineer is a person who engineers, or in plain English, develops, software. This position is for someone in pre-sales and technical support. In fact, there is nothing in this job description that even relates to the profession of software engineering.
Okay, so maybe the listing employer has something a little different in mind from me when they call this a "computer software engineer" position. However, that makes it no less a complete waste of my time because I am a computer software engineer and this is nothing like what I do. I could do it, but it's not what I want or in my areas of expertise, and the misleading title makes it look like something it is not. Foo.
SOFTWARE SOLUTION ARCHITECT
(Let me say up front that I knew from this title it wasn't what I'm looking for, but it is such a broad-scope title it could mean anything. Let's take a look....)
"Providing pre-sales technical and business support Work closely with Sales Delivery Teams Manage project timelines, scope, budget, risk and resource allocation and scheduling Demonstrates architecture and design expertise in the area of Microsoft BI and SharePoint Help Project teams and assist resources in the technical development Manage POCs Conduct Presentations and demos Participate in information gathering, define work problems, and design programs and procedures to resolve problems. Gather, understand and document client requirements. Prepare for and actively participate in client meetings when required Build a Microsoft Business Intelligence Practice working under the auspices of the BI Program Manager"
Hold on a minute - isn't that almost verbatim what the Computer Software Engineer position said? It's pretty close, but the names make them seem worlds apart. I think this is the same company, and that worries me, too. Here's the one distinction between these two positions:
"Demonstrates architecture and design expertise in the area of Microsoft BI and SharePoint"
So what was the point of all that other stuff that was word-for-word the same between these two positions? Why was it buried in the middle?
Another really big point here is that both of these descriptions clearly involve Microsoft expertise, but neither one of them includes that tiny little tidbit ("MS") up front in the job title. In fact, a whole lot of the CalJobs and other job search listings leave out this rather salient fact that could be called out in the title with just two letters. In general, I haven't done a lot of Windows-specific development, and my expertise is in UNIX and Linux, not Microsoft, so these little distinctions are extremely important in my field.
Let's try number three:
SENIOR ENGINEER
"Participate in the architecture and development of software utilities and tools that are used to develop, validate and support Western Digital disk drives. Provide technical guidance for developing applications in the Windows and Linux environments. Develop driver, kernel and application level solutions with SAS, SATA, legacy ATA, and serial IO drivers. Under moderate supervision, write drive testing tools for CPU architecture, including PPC, ARM x86-64, and perform system-level programming in Linux with Slax, Fedora, Ubuntu and RedHat. Interface with other groups to define and develop new tools and enhance existing software utilities. Perform PCI device driver development utilizing T10/1760-D SAS and T10/1826-D SAT-2 protocol. Implement the Linux driver stack for storage devices. Write software applications that interface directly with hardware in C/C++ and Java with the aim of optimizing operational efficiency. Support Western Digitals integration of advanced features into new drive products. Required skills include: System-level programming experience in Linux: Slax, Fedora, Ubuntu and RedHat; Linux driver stack for storage devices; PCI device driver development; C/C++ and Java; writing software applications that interface directly to hardware; SAS ,SATA, legacy ATA, and serial IO driver; writing drive testing tools for CPU architecture, including PPC, ARM x86-64; and T10/1760-D SAS, T10/1826-D SAT-2 protocol. Education and experience requirement: Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering or Electronics Engineering or Computer Science + 5 years progressively responsible and post-baccalaureate experience. Will also accept a Masters degree in one of the same fields + 3 years experience."
When you get through all of that, what it boils down to is a senior-level Linux device driver writer (okay, engineer). This is more of a hard engineer position than the average software engineer and it is a low-level, close-to-the-hardware kind of job. The question is, how do I get that from the title "Senior Engineer?" I don't, and neither do you. Why? Because "Senior Engineer" is an HR title for a particular level of technical developer in this company's internal parlance. I was a "Senior Engineer" early in my career, for two years after I had been an "Engineer" for a year and a half and before I became "Principal Engineer" for at least two years after that. In all that time, I never once wrote a single device driver (nor since, but I digress) - I was a key software engineer in the development of a brand new operating system, and I loved that job.
Here's one more chance:
SOFTWARE ENGINEER
"This engineer will design, code and test medium to large software modules as they apply to a specific product. Will also create the requirements analysis, functional design, and detailed design specifications as they relate to the implementation of the software. Essential Functions: Designs, codes, and tests medium to large software modules Participate in short term planning of IT projects and programs Participate in group design meetings Analyze, interpret and make decisions affecting work methods and procedures within an overall program Participates in the development of larger modules which may also include requirements analysis, architectural design, or detailed design tasks under the direction of a more experienced engineer Will write technical documentation Develop software using at least one programming language and platform Will utilize source control tools and related build mechanisms Will install and configure software development tools and/or operating systems Will debug and correct problems in existing software Estimates the complexity of a certain task and an appropriate schedule Will create the requirements analysis, functional design, and detailed design specifications as they relate to the implementation of a software module Will provide direction to less experienced engineers Can resolve complex software problems/bugs via advanced debugging techniques Will follow all company standards, including the software coding standards document Additional Functions: Must be able to work independently with little supervision. Must practice regular continued self-education. Exercise troubleshooting and problem solving skills. Must have a willingness to teach others. Requirements: Candidate must be experienced with OO concepts and have a working knowledge of Java. B.S. Computer Science or equivalent experience. Strong understanding of object oriented analysis, design and programming. At least 4 years of Java programming experience, object oriented analysis, design and programming. Ability to work both individually and in team environments is essential. The individual must be articulate and communicate effectively, both in written and oral formats. Experience in a J2EE application server environment. Experience in Ajax, JSP, hibernate Experience in an enterprise transactional environment, a plus. Experience in XML, UML and SQL a plus. Real time programming or other thread management, a plus. Box Office Management or other ticketing experience, a plus. Experience as a group Leader a plus. All other duties as assigned."
Wow, now that's a mouthful - 363 words. Here's the sad part - the first mention of what this job is really about doesn't occur until word number 243, 2/3 of the way through the description. What is that? "OO" which is computer parlance for Object Oriented, followed a few words later by a really important key word, Java. Do you remember what I said earlier about what I do? I develop software in C or C++. No mention of Java.
So, what, Mark? For crying out loud, what do you want, anyway?
See, there are lots of languages used in programming computers, a.k.a., developing software. Some are similar, some are so different you wouldn't know they even fall into the same class of anything unless you happen to know the field anyway.
My point is this: what this company is looking for is a Java Developer, not just any software developer. This routinely excludes people who specialize in C, LISP, COBOL, PHP or any other 4GL, SQL - in fact, it pretty much excludes anyone who doesn't know Java specifically, or, at the closest, C++ or C#. As a job seeker, I not only want to know this up front, I need to know it, for their benefit as well as mine.
There are just a couple more things I'd like to go through here, and they're pretty simple.
PRINCIPAL SOFTWARE ENGINEER - [COMPANY] CLIENT DEVELOPMENT - [unique identifier]
"Location(s) US - California - IrvineTitle Principal Software Engineer - [Company] Client Development - [omitted]Job Description [Company]’s software utilizes patented data de-duplication technology to backup data once – and only once – on a global basis. [Company] identifies redundant data segments at the source, thereby reducing the amount of network bandwidth used and data stored. Using this and other patented [Company] technology, customers can achieve an industry leading 300:1 daily data reduction in real-world applications. [Company] already leverages [---]’s broad portfolio of offerings, such as [unique identifier] as a target for disk-based backup. For customers that require both disk- and tape-based data protection solutions, [Company] wants to talk to candidates interested in the position of Principal Software Engineer located in our Irvine, CA facility.Principal Software Engineer - [Company] Responsibilities* Software engineer to work on development and support of an advanced, multi-platform, disk-based backup system. Work on a small development team in Irvine, CA on a dynamic and fast growing product within a large, stable, publicly traded company.* Development tasks: designing, developing and maintaining multi-threaded, client/server C++ code, correcting bugs, handling field escalations, etc.* Possibly acting as a project leader or liaison in coordinating communications between development teams, QA & Customer Support.Skills* Experience with development of Unix/Linux and Windows software products highly desired* Experience with backup, data compression and filesystem internals highly desired* Experience with databases (Oracle, SQL Server, Exchange, DB/2, etc.) or multiple operating systems (Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOSX, HP-UX, AIX, Netware, etc.) highly desired* Understanding of requirements for Enterprise-class software products highly desired* Very good problem-solving analytical skillsExperience /Education* B.S. (or better) in Computer Science* 8+ years industry level software experience* Skilled in C++ programming* Excellent English communication and writing skills* Enjoys working on a team and helping others [EOE disclaimer, etc.]"
I know this company, I interviewed there a few years ago, when they were looking for this exact same position. I didn't get the job then, which always left me a little mystified, but I know it's one I could not only do and well, but excel at - it's in my area, I'm familiar with the technologies, and so on. My suspicion is that it's one of those openings where they want an exact fit, and the sad part is that they won't find one. After this many years and still having the same opening, anyone they hired between then and now didn't work out, for whatever reason, and they're either too picky or they don't really need this position filled. Either way, it's a lose-lose for them. (BTW, I did apply, haven't heard back, may apply again with a better cover letter - we'll see....)
To make the rest short, I saw a whole slew of listings on another job search site for "Software Developer III," "Software Developer IV," "Software Engineer II" and the like. Do you have any idea what those are? Don't they sound a lot alike?
In fact, they are not (of course), and for the same reasons I noted above about those positions, too.
So, what's the point?
Employers: if you have a job opening for a Java Applications Developer, please call it that, not just "Software Engineer." If you're looking for a hardware engineer, please do not call it "Applications Engineer" - yes, I saw a few like that. If you can just step a word or two outside your HR title boxes, you make it easier for those of us looking for work to find a good fit and benefit you.
Job Seekers: remember that the majority of employers don't do what I just asked, and be patient. Above all, don't expect the perfect description you find to be a perfect fit. If you should happen to find a really good fit, make sure you write a really good cover letter that says so. Otherwise, your resume will wind up with every other not-quite-perfect match - in the HR file for "future prospects" or just the circular file....
One of the great things about being unemployed is that I have been privileged to see lots and lots of job openings and how they're written, and why they don't work. I can tell you right here that the main reason they don't work is that they are not written for the job seeker at all, they're mostly written from the employer's HR perspective, and that really hurts.
For one thing, we seekers are looking for something that describes a position where we would feel competent, capable, contributory and challenged to do well. Most of the job descriptions I've seen are so idealistic that they would not be available at all if the ideal candidate existed. (In other words, if that employer could find a candidate like that, they would already be employed and not looking for a job.)
I say this because I've seen a whole lot of job openings that are easily jobs where I could perform well and contribute a lot, and with over 30 years in my field now, I can learn what I don't already know. But most of the job descriptions are written as if the candidate has to fit perfectly, and my take on that is - if that person existed, they wouldn't be looking at the description to find a new job, they'd already have it.
I should probably also say that I have yet to find a job description that fits me that well, but, then, I'm not employed, either.
I'm going to go through a few actual job postings I've seen right here, so I can make it clear what I'm saying and you, the employer or seeker reading this blog, will have no trouble understanding what I mean.
These are actual job listings taken from CalJobs, LinkedIn and a few other places, with names and other unique identifiers removed so as not to make it too obvious who goofed (especially if that would be me).
Here's one from LinkedIn:
"Looking for talented PHP developer - for company in Israel 2+ years experience"
This is one I like: it tells me what the company is looking for and where it's located, right up front. In fact, most of the postings I've seen on LinkedIn are really good. The ones that are not either don't include the location or have other deficiencies in common with the rest, which I will now proceed to cover.
I'm registered for searches at CalJobs, a free job listing service provided by the California Employment Development Department, with a resume built in their system using their forms, designed to get me a job in software development in C or C++ on UNIX or Linux systems, applications server-side or system level (except that I don't do device drivers, but there's no way to say that), OR providing PC services. Their search engine doesn't have a lot of flexibility, so my primary area of focus is software applications development.
Here are four from CalJobs:
| COMPUTER SOFTWARE ENGINEER | Irvine | 92612 | Not stated | Long Term | 1/15/2010 |
| SOFTWARE SOLUTION ARCHITECT | Irvine | 92612 | Not stated | Long Term | 1/15/2010 |
| SENIOR ENGINEER | Lake Forest | 92630 | Not stated | Long Term | 1/15/2010 |
| SOFTWARE ENGINEER | Costa Mesa | 92626 | Fair market | Long Term | 1/15/2010 |
(Column four is the rate of pay, if you didn't guess....)
These aren't too bad, although the job titles are kind of bland and unrevealing. Let's take a closer look at the job descriptions themselves.
COMPUTER SOFTWARE ENGINEER
"Providing pre-sales technical and business support Work closely with Sales Delivery Teams Manage project timelines, scope, budget, risk and resource allocation and scheduling Help Project teams and assist resources in the technical development Manage POCs Conduct Presentations and demos Participate in information gathering, define work problems, and design programs and procedures to resolve problems. Gather, understand and document client requirements. Prepare for and actively participate in client meetings when required Other Build a Microsoft Business Intelligence Practice working under the auspices of the BI Program Manager"
(The format is also an artifact of the CalJobs system - it's pretty flat and, thus, a little tricky to read, but that's not what wrong with this entry.)
To begin with, a software engineer is a person who engineers, or in plain English, develops, software. This position is for someone in pre-sales and technical support. In fact, there is nothing in this job description that even relates to the profession of software engineering.
Okay, so maybe the listing employer has something a little different in mind from me when they call this a "computer software engineer" position. However, that makes it no less a complete waste of my time because I am a computer software engineer and this is nothing like what I do. I could do it, but it's not what I want or in my areas of expertise, and the misleading title makes it look like something it is not. Foo.
SOFTWARE SOLUTION ARCHITECT
(Let me say up front that I knew from this title it wasn't what I'm looking for, but it is such a broad-scope title it could mean anything. Let's take a look....)
"Providing pre-sales technical and business support Work closely with Sales Delivery Teams Manage project timelines, scope, budget, risk and resource allocation and scheduling Demonstrates architecture and design expertise in the area of Microsoft BI and SharePoint Help Project teams and assist resources in the technical development Manage POCs Conduct Presentations and demos Participate in information gathering, define work problems, and design programs and procedures to resolve problems. Gather, understand and document client requirements. Prepare for and actively participate in client meetings when required Build a Microsoft Business Intelligence Practice working under the auspices of the BI Program Manager"
Hold on a minute - isn't that almost verbatim what the Computer Software Engineer position said? It's pretty close, but the names make them seem worlds apart. I think this is the same company, and that worries me, too. Here's the one distinction between these two positions:
"Demonstrates architecture and design expertise in the area of Microsoft BI and SharePoint"
So what was the point of all that other stuff that was word-for-word the same between these two positions? Why was it buried in the middle?
Another really big point here is that both of these descriptions clearly involve Microsoft expertise, but neither one of them includes that tiny little tidbit ("MS") up front in the job title. In fact, a whole lot of the CalJobs and other job search listings leave out this rather salient fact that could be called out in the title with just two letters. In general, I haven't done a lot of Windows-specific development, and my expertise is in UNIX and Linux, not Microsoft, so these little distinctions are extremely important in my field.
Let's try number three:
SENIOR ENGINEER
"Participate in the architecture and development of software utilities and tools that are used to develop, validate and support Western Digital disk drives. Provide technical guidance for developing applications in the Windows and Linux environments. Develop driver, kernel and application level solutions with SAS, SATA, legacy ATA, and serial IO drivers. Under moderate supervision, write drive testing tools for CPU architecture, including PPC, ARM x86-64, and perform system-level programming in Linux with Slax, Fedora, Ubuntu and RedHat. Interface with other groups to define and develop new tools and enhance existing software utilities. Perform PCI device driver development utilizing T10/1760-D SAS and T10/1826-D SAT-2 protocol. Implement the Linux driver stack for storage devices. Write software applications that interface directly with hardware in C/C++ and Java with the aim of optimizing operational efficiency. Support Western Digitals integration of advanced features into new drive products. Required skills include: System-level programming experience in Linux: Slax, Fedora, Ubuntu and RedHat; Linux driver stack for storage devices; PCI device driver development; C/C++ and Java; writing software applications that interface directly to hardware; SAS ,SATA, legacy ATA, and serial IO driver; writing drive testing tools for CPU architecture, including PPC, ARM x86-64; and T10/1760-D SAS, T10/1826-D SAT-2 protocol. Education and experience requirement: Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering or Electronics Engineering or Computer Science + 5 years progressively responsible and post-baccalaureate experience. Will also accept a Masters degree in one of the same fields + 3 years experience."
When you get through all of that, what it boils down to is a senior-level Linux device driver writer (okay, engineer). This is more of a hard engineer position than the average software engineer and it is a low-level, close-to-the-hardware kind of job. The question is, how do I get that from the title "Senior Engineer?" I don't, and neither do you. Why? Because "Senior Engineer" is an HR title for a particular level of technical developer in this company's internal parlance. I was a "Senior Engineer" early in my career, for two years after I had been an "Engineer" for a year and a half and before I became "Principal Engineer" for at least two years after that. In all that time, I never once wrote a single device driver (nor since, but I digress) - I was a key software engineer in the development of a brand new operating system, and I loved that job.
Here's one more chance:
SOFTWARE ENGINEER
"This engineer will design, code and test medium to large software modules as they apply to a specific product. Will also create the requirements analysis, functional design, and detailed design specifications as they relate to the implementation of the software. Essential Functions: Designs, codes, and tests medium to large software modules Participate in short term planning of IT projects and programs Participate in group design meetings Analyze, interpret and make decisions affecting work methods and procedures within an overall program Participates in the development of larger modules which may also include requirements analysis, architectural design, or detailed design tasks under the direction of a more experienced engineer Will write technical documentation Develop software using at least one programming language and platform Will utilize source control tools and related build mechanisms Will install and configure software development tools and/or operating systems Will debug and correct problems in existing software Estimates the complexity of a certain task and an appropriate schedule Will create the requirements analysis, functional design, and detailed design specifications as they relate to the implementation of a software module Will provide direction to less experienced engineers Can resolve complex software problems/bugs via advanced debugging techniques Will follow all company standards, including the software coding standards document Additional Functions: Must be able to work independently with little supervision. Must practice regular continued self-education. Exercise troubleshooting and problem solving skills. Must have a willingness to teach others. Requirements: Candidate must be experienced with OO concepts and have a working knowledge of Java. B.S. Computer Science or equivalent experience. Strong understanding of object oriented analysis, design and programming. At least 4 years of Java programming experience, object oriented analysis, design and programming. Ability to work both individually and in team environments is essential. The individual must be articulate and communicate effectively, both in written and oral formats. Experience in a J2EE application server environment. Experience in Ajax, JSP, hibernate Experience in an enterprise transactional environment, a plus. Experience in XML, UML and SQL a plus. Real time programming or other thread management, a plus. Box Office Management or other ticketing experience, a plus. Experience as a group Leader a plus. All other duties as assigned."
Wow, now that's a mouthful - 363 words. Here's the sad part - the first mention of what this job is really about doesn't occur until word number 243, 2/3 of the way through the description. What is that? "OO" which is computer parlance for Object Oriented, followed a few words later by a really important key word, Java. Do you remember what I said earlier about what I do? I develop software in C or C++. No mention of Java.
So, what, Mark? For crying out loud, what do you want, anyway?
See, there are lots of languages used in programming computers, a.k.a., developing software. Some are similar, some are so different you wouldn't know they even fall into the same class of anything unless you happen to know the field anyway.
My point is this: what this company is looking for is a Java Developer, not just any software developer. This routinely excludes people who specialize in C, LISP, COBOL, PHP or any other 4GL, SQL - in fact, it pretty much excludes anyone who doesn't know Java specifically, or, at the closest, C++ or C#. As a job seeker, I not only want to know this up front, I need to know it, for their benefit as well as mine.
There are just a couple more things I'd like to go through here, and they're pretty simple.
PRINCIPAL SOFTWARE ENGINEER - [COMPANY] CLIENT DEVELOPMENT - [unique identifier]
"Location(s) US - California - IrvineTitle Principal Software Engineer - [Company] Client Development - [omitted]Job Description [Company]’s software utilizes patented data de-duplication technology to backup data once – and only once – on a global basis. [Company] identifies redundant data segments at the source, thereby reducing the amount of network bandwidth used and data stored. Using this and other patented [Company] technology, customers can achieve an industry leading 300:1 daily data reduction in real-world applications. [Company] already leverages [---]’s broad portfolio of offerings, such as [unique identifier] as a target for disk-based backup. For customers that require both disk- and tape-based data protection solutions, [Company] wants to talk to candidates interested in the position of Principal Software Engineer located in our Irvine, CA facility.Principal Software Engineer - [Company] Responsibilities* Software engineer to work on development and support of an advanced, multi-platform, disk-based backup system. Work on a small development team in Irvine, CA on a dynamic and fast growing product within a large, stable, publicly traded company.* Development tasks: designing, developing and maintaining multi-threaded, client/server C++ code, correcting bugs, handling field escalations, etc.* Possibly acting as a project leader or liaison in coordinating communications between development teams, QA & Customer Support.Skills* Experience with development of Unix/Linux and Windows software products highly desired* Experience with backup, data compression and filesystem internals highly desired* Experience with databases (Oracle, SQL Server, Exchange, DB/2, etc.) or multiple operating systems (Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOSX, HP-UX, AIX, Netware, etc.) highly desired* Understanding of requirements for Enterprise-class software products highly desired* Very good problem-solving analytical skillsExperience /Education* B.S. (or better) in Computer Science* 8+ years industry level software experience* Skilled in C++ programming* Excellent English communication and writing skills* Enjoys working on a team and helping others [EOE disclaimer, etc.]"
I know this company, I interviewed there a few years ago, when they were looking for this exact same position. I didn't get the job then, which always left me a little mystified, but I know it's one I could not only do and well, but excel at - it's in my area, I'm familiar with the technologies, and so on. My suspicion is that it's one of those openings where they want an exact fit, and the sad part is that they won't find one. After this many years and still having the same opening, anyone they hired between then and now didn't work out, for whatever reason, and they're either too picky or they don't really need this position filled. Either way, it's a lose-lose for them. (BTW, I did apply, haven't heard back, may apply again with a better cover letter - we'll see....)
To make the rest short, I saw a whole slew of listings on another job search site for "Software Developer III," "Software Developer IV," "Software Engineer II" and the like. Do you have any idea what those are? Don't they sound a lot alike?
In fact, they are not (of course), and for the same reasons I noted above about those positions, too.
So, what's the point?
Employers: if you have a job opening for a Java Applications Developer, please call it that, not just "Software Engineer." If you're looking for a hardware engineer, please do not call it "Applications Engineer" - yes, I saw a few like that. If you can just step a word or two outside your HR title boxes, you make it easier for those of us looking for work to find a good fit and benefit you.
Job Seekers: remember that the majority of employers don't do what I just asked, and be patient. Above all, don't expect the perfect description you find to be a perfect fit. If you should happen to find a really good fit, make sure you write a really good cover letter that says so. Otherwise, your resume will wind up with every other not-quite-perfect match - in the HR file for "future prospects" or just the circular file....
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Health Insurance in the Real World
I seem to have missed a few days, but as I was saying . . .
Last time I talked about insurance in general, and how what seemed like a good, socially responsible idea at the beginning had become corrupted into a scam to enrich the already-too-rich.
Today (tonight?) I'd like to explain what health insurance means to some people who were lucky enough to have it (ha ha ha!).
At my last place of employment, I worked as a contractor for a recruiter-contract house that I won't name. As part of the benefits package for this contract house, they offered health insurance for me, my wife and my family. I though that this was a nice gesture since, as a contractor, I would not otherwise be eligible for health insurance through the employer, even though this was supposed to be a contract-to-permanent position.
I should probably point out that, before that job, I had been disabled for almost ten months before I recovered enough to go back to work. At that job, I had FREE health insurance coverage from my employer with a plan that covered 90% of most of my health care costs, with a reasonable deductible, low copays, reasonable prescription drug payments (discounted up front) and an annual out-of-pocket maximum expense per person and per family. It wasn't ideal, but it was right up there with the best insurance I've ever had. When I was disabled and went onto COBRA, I was able to get that exact same coverage for the entire ten months for less than $1000 per month, which wasn't too bad, all things considered.
Unfortunately, since there is no universal health care, or even universal health insurance, and there is virtually no regulation of what kinds of benefits an employer is required to offer (oh, my, God - that would be - SOCIALIST!!!! NOT), this contract house was able to get away with offering the worst insurance coverage I have ever had - the deductibles were about the same, but the coverage was only 70%, with higher copays on office visits and NO up-front prescription drug coverage at all. I have to submit claims to get reimbursed for my prescriptions, and they routinely take a little more than a month to pay, which means, if I'm lucky, I get 70% of what I need to refill a prescription within a week after the last dosage runs out.
Also, there's an annual maximum benefit. This is not an annual maximum out-of-pocket expense for me, it is an annual maximum amount the insurance will pay before I get stuck with all the costs. I'm not even 100% sure how they calculate it, all I know is that it hit me fairly hard last January and I had loads of fun for the next six months working around the limits.
One real hospital visit for about three days, and I will have to declare bankruptcy, and thereafter get "health care" from whatever free clinics I can find because my wonderful insurance won't cover anything.
Not only that, I get the dubious privilege of paying for this exotic coverage, to the tune of over $1200 per month.
I suppose I should quit my crying and just suck it up and act like a man. The problem is that the job market where I can (almost) afford to live is pretty lean and I've been unemployed now for over a year. My disability ran out and unemployment pays less than half of that, which was less than half of what I need to keep my house, my car cover transportation for necessities and, oh yes, HEALTH INSURANCE!
Maybe at this point you think I should consider dropping my health insurance altogether. After all, if it's so bleaming expensive, it must not be worth it. You may be right, so let's look at that.
One of the scams that our current health accounting (oops, I mean insurance) industry has managed to set up over at least the last 30 years is that they contract out to some approved set of doctors for discounts on their services. If you have PPO (Preferred Provider Organization) coverage, you go to one of their doctors and get their services at a fairly steep discount. (Makes me wonder just how good their services can be when they're getting undercut on their rates, too, also to the benefit of the insurance accountants, er, industry.)
If not, you pay through the nose (or whatever other bodily orifice you find most appropriate to consider for this).
If you have an HMO, you're in much worse shape, although, until you get sick, it seems to be a better deal. If you're young and in good health, maybe you're better off. I'm neither any more, and I trust HMOs about as far as I'd trust Tricky Dick Nixon and Ed Kaiser, who convinced the nation that HMOs were a good alternative to real insurance. I'm not going there tonight (but I strongly recommend the movie SiCKO if you have not yet seen it).
So, if I go to see my regular doctors once a month, I pay $20 per visit, plus the $1200+ to cover my wife and kids for their visits. Without insurance, I'd be paying around $200 per visit, and that does not even begin to include X-rays, lab work, MRIs (especially MRIs - yee-ouch!), outpatient surgery (with any kind of anaesthesia, nurses, ORs, surgical center fees, etc., etc., etc.) or, heaven forbid, an actual in-patient visit to a hospital.
That's the health insurance scam in a nutshell, and Congress is about to give away the store to the health insurance lobbyist industry because that what they paid our "representatives" to do. If you don't believe me, go take a look at how much money Senator Ben Nelson took from the insurance industry to step on the "public option" (which is a whole other scam, but I digress), or how much Joe Lieberman, a name almost synonymous with Benedict Arnold in many people's eyes today, was paid.
Oh, wait, I forgot - they weren't paid. They were given campaign contributions. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, money is the same thing as speech, and we can't restrict the freedom of speech, particularly not for the legal fictions known as corporations, which are, believe it or not, persons with the same rights as individual human beings, under the law.
And that, dear readers, is the real scam in the guise of "health insurance," or any other kind of insurance, in another nutshell....
Last time I talked about insurance in general, and how what seemed like a good, socially responsible idea at the beginning had become corrupted into a scam to enrich the already-too-rich.
Today (tonight?) I'd like to explain what health insurance means to some people who were lucky enough to have it (ha ha ha!).
At my last place of employment, I worked as a contractor for a recruiter-contract house that I won't name. As part of the benefits package for this contract house, they offered health insurance for me, my wife and my family. I though that this was a nice gesture since, as a contractor, I would not otherwise be eligible for health insurance through the employer, even though this was supposed to be a contract-to-permanent position.
I should probably point out that, before that job, I had been disabled for almost ten months before I recovered enough to go back to work. At that job, I had FREE health insurance coverage from my employer with a plan that covered 90% of most of my health care costs, with a reasonable deductible, low copays, reasonable prescription drug payments (discounted up front) and an annual out-of-pocket maximum expense per person and per family. It wasn't ideal, but it was right up there with the best insurance I've ever had. When I was disabled and went onto COBRA, I was able to get that exact same coverage for the entire ten months for less than $1000 per month, which wasn't too bad, all things considered.
Unfortunately, since there is no universal health care, or even universal health insurance, and there is virtually no regulation of what kinds of benefits an employer is required to offer (oh, my, God - that would be - SOCIALIST!!!! NOT), this contract house was able to get away with offering the worst insurance coverage I have ever had - the deductibles were about the same, but the coverage was only 70%, with higher copays on office visits and NO up-front prescription drug coverage at all. I have to submit claims to get reimbursed for my prescriptions, and they routinely take a little more than a month to pay, which means, if I'm lucky, I get 70% of what I need to refill a prescription within a week after the last dosage runs out.
Also, there's an annual maximum benefit. This is not an annual maximum out-of-pocket expense for me, it is an annual maximum amount the insurance will pay before I get stuck with all the costs. I'm not even 100% sure how they calculate it, all I know is that it hit me fairly hard last January and I had loads of fun for the next six months working around the limits.
One real hospital visit for about three days, and I will have to declare bankruptcy, and thereafter get "health care" from whatever free clinics I can find because my wonderful insurance won't cover anything.
Not only that, I get the dubious privilege of paying for this exotic coverage, to the tune of over $1200 per month.
I suppose I should quit my crying and just suck it up and act like a man. The problem is that the job market where I can (almost) afford to live is pretty lean and I've been unemployed now for over a year. My disability ran out and unemployment pays less than half of that, which was less than half of what I need to keep my house, my car cover transportation for necessities and, oh yes, HEALTH INSURANCE!
Maybe at this point you think I should consider dropping my health insurance altogether. After all, if it's so bleaming expensive, it must not be worth it. You may be right, so let's look at that.
One of the scams that our current health accounting (oops, I mean insurance) industry has managed to set up over at least the last 30 years is that they contract out to some approved set of doctors for discounts on their services. If you have PPO (Preferred Provider Organization) coverage, you go to one of their doctors and get their services at a fairly steep discount. (Makes me wonder just how good their services can be when they're getting undercut on their rates, too, also to the benefit of the insurance accountants, er, industry.)
If not, you pay through the nose (or whatever other bodily orifice you find most appropriate to consider for this).
If you have an HMO, you're in much worse shape, although, until you get sick, it seems to be a better deal. If you're young and in good health, maybe you're better off. I'm neither any more, and I trust HMOs about as far as I'd trust Tricky Dick Nixon and Ed Kaiser, who convinced the nation that HMOs were a good alternative to real insurance. I'm not going there tonight (but I strongly recommend the movie SiCKO if you have not yet seen it).
So, if I go to see my regular doctors once a month, I pay $20 per visit, plus the $1200+ to cover my wife and kids for their visits. Without insurance, I'd be paying around $200 per visit, and that does not even begin to include X-rays, lab work, MRIs (especially MRIs - yee-ouch!), outpatient surgery (with any kind of anaesthesia, nurses, ORs, surgical center fees, etc., etc., etc.) or, heaven forbid, an actual in-patient visit to a hospital.
That's the health insurance scam in a nutshell, and Congress is about to give away the store to the health insurance lobbyist industry because that what they paid our "representatives" to do. If you don't believe me, go take a look at how much money Senator Ben Nelson took from the insurance industry to step on the "public option" (which is a whole other scam, but I digress), or how much Joe Lieberman, a name almost synonymous with Benedict Arnold in many people's eyes today, was paid.
Oh, wait, I forgot - they weren't paid. They were given campaign contributions. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, money is the same thing as speech, and we can't restrict the freedom of speech, particularly not for the legal fictions known as corporations, which are, believe it or not, persons with the same rights as individual human beings, under the law.
And that, dear readers, is the real scam in the guise of "health insurance," or any other kind of insurance, in another nutshell....
Monday, January 11, 2010
Insurance - Legitimate Business to Consumer Scam
Today's issue is about insurance, what it was and that into which it has morphed.
A long time ago (I haven't taken the trouble to research exactly when), some people took note of certain costs that a lot of people routinely encountered and figured out a way to make it cheaper to afford those costs. They set up a risky, legalized gamble where they would collect certain small sums of money from large groups of people as security against a future loss, and then when a loss occurred, they paid for the loss using the proceeds from the monies they had already collected. The idea was a pretty good one, and soon enough, it caught on like wildfire. Insurance became less of a risk because the odds, which the insurance companies researched as deeply as they could afford to without adding to the potential losses, were pretty good, as long as the insured people were honest and didn't file too many false claims (and get away with them).
After many years of these practices, the sharks moved in and took over. They figured out that this insurance stuff looked pretty lucrative, and they could make it even more so with an number of provisos.
First, they had to prosecute false claims. Then, they arranged to make it a serious crime (probably with massive campaign contributions) to defraud an insurance company. Gradually, they expanded insurance to the point where it covered lives, property losses, health care costs, car damages, liability for damages in virtually all areas, and more.
But it was still a risk. When people had catastrophic losses, they expected to be able to collect astronomical damages, maybe even more with punitive or exemplary damages as well. So, the insurance companies went to their friends in the legislatures again (and we all know that these are the kinds of friends that money can buy, over and over again, with or without term limits - probably more in the latter case) and arranged to make automobile insurance a legal requirement for a person to be able to register a vehicle. They went to the banks and mortgage companies and convinced them that a mortgage wasn't safe without casualty insurance on the property. They went even further and convinced the bankers to require title insurance on every sale of real property, which reimburses the buyer (i.e., the buyer's lender) if the property turns out not to have been owned by the seller. (How often does that happen in real life?)
They even managed to convince the lawmakers that the costs of the fields that were insured could be brought down by placing legal limits on how much an injured person could collect from insurance (in the guise of the insured ones who caused the problems and were shielded by the insurers). To everyone's surprise (haha), insurance premiums did not go down, but insurance company profits went up!
Then there were mergers and acquisitions, and each time the insurers grew richer and bigger, and the laws changed to allow them more and more latitude.
And still it wasn't enough. There were risks that they might not be able to wring every possible dollar and cent out of an increasingly impoverished clientele (a.k.a. the public - you and me).
So they went back to the lawmakers and arranged to be allowed to cross the lines that were established to prevent another depression, like 1929 and its aftermath, so they could go into business with bankers, credit card issuers and other financial institutions. They became too big to fail (which really means that they were so big that their failures would cause economic damage on a global scale yet to be fully realized).
Finally, they created the most colossally unbelievable financial insurance of them all - credit default swaps, commonly known as derivatives - as a way to insure against the loss of an insurance policy on a financial instrument that might actually have some value. In other words, they created insurance for insurance.
A lot of this has been going on for years and years - decades, actually, but it was all carefully kept secret, hidden away from prying eyes of the average person who a) wouldn't understand what it was, b) couldn't possibly collect any money from it anyway, and most importantly, c) might think these things were pretty fishy and try to get them taxed or outlawed.
In the spring of 2008, to the great consternation of people who were completely ignorant of all of these things, some of these now gigantic insurance schemes began to unravel. By fall, the unraveling could no longer be hidden even from the mainstream propaganda media, and more and more massive losses, staggering losses, began to pile up as first the real estate market and then the derivatives market began to fall apart.
So, the banks/insurers/credit-card-issuers, who can never get enough of our money, not even if they have all of it, pulled the greatest scam of all - they went back to their favorite toys, the lawmakers of the land, and convinced (most likely through covert bribery, also known as campaign contributions, overt bribery and outright blackmail) them to cover their losses with "tax money" (really just paper printed by the biggest insurance scam artist of all, the Federal Reserve, whose money is not even real money) because they had no prayer of being able to do so themselves.
After all, a lot of them were too busy going on multi-million dollar luxury cruises and buying expensive cars, land or other property that was also losing its value at a staggering rate.
Now we, the taxpayers of the United States, are getting stuck with a bill that has been predicted may run higher than $25 TRILLION, which is just less than half of the current market value of the entire resources of planet Earth, and enough to enrich every nation on the planet except - oh, yeah, U.S.
That's what insurance is all about.
Come back soon, when I'll talk about just how wonderful a thing health insurance is and why we need to reform it so the insurance companies can make even more money!
Just my $0.02, and not even worth that much (in 1960's equivalent copper pennies) any more....
A long time ago (I haven't taken the trouble to research exactly when), some people took note of certain costs that a lot of people routinely encountered and figured out a way to make it cheaper to afford those costs. They set up a risky, legalized gamble where they would collect certain small sums of money from large groups of people as security against a future loss, and then when a loss occurred, they paid for the loss using the proceeds from the monies they had already collected. The idea was a pretty good one, and soon enough, it caught on like wildfire. Insurance became less of a risk because the odds, which the insurance companies researched as deeply as they could afford to without adding to the potential losses, were pretty good, as long as the insured people were honest and didn't file too many false claims (and get away with them).
After many years of these practices, the sharks moved in and took over. They figured out that this insurance stuff looked pretty lucrative, and they could make it even more so with an number of provisos.
First, they had to prosecute false claims. Then, they arranged to make it a serious crime (probably with massive campaign contributions) to defraud an insurance company. Gradually, they expanded insurance to the point where it covered lives, property losses, health care costs, car damages, liability for damages in virtually all areas, and more.
But it was still a risk. When people had catastrophic losses, they expected to be able to collect astronomical damages, maybe even more with punitive or exemplary damages as well. So, the insurance companies went to their friends in the legislatures again (and we all know that these are the kinds of friends that money can buy, over and over again, with or without term limits - probably more in the latter case) and arranged to make automobile insurance a legal requirement for a person to be able to register a vehicle. They went to the banks and mortgage companies and convinced them that a mortgage wasn't safe without casualty insurance on the property. They went even further and convinced the bankers to require title insurance on every sale of real property, which reimburses the buyer (i.e., the buyer's lender) if the property turns out not to have been owned by the seller. (How often does that happen in real life?)
They even managed to convince the lawmakers that the costs of the fields that were insured could be brought down by placing legal limits on how much an injured person could collect from insurance (in the guise of the insured ones who caused the problems and were shielded by the insurers). To everyone's surprise (haha), insurance premiums did not go down, but insurance company profits went up!
Then there were mergers and acquisitions, and each time the insurers grew richer and bigger, and the laws changed to allow them more and more latitude.
And still it wasn't enough. There were risks that they might not be able to wring every possible dollar and cent out of an increasingly impoverished clientele (a.k.a. the public - you and me).
So they went back to the lawmakers and arranged to be allowed to cross the lines that were established to prevent another depression, like 1929 and its aftermath, so they could go into business with bankers, credit card issuers and other financial institutions. They became too big to fail (which really means that they were so big that their failures would cause economic damage on a global scale yet to be fully realized).
Finally, they created the most colossally unbelievable financial insurance of them all - credit default swaps, commonly known as derivatives - as a way to insure against the loss of an insurance policy on a financial instrument that might actually have some value. In other words, they created insurance for insurance.
A lot of this has been going on for years and years - decades, actually, but it was all carefully kept secret, hidden away from prying eyes of the average person who a) wouldn't understand what it was, b) couldn't possibly collect any money from it anyway, and most importantly, c) might think these things were pretty fishy and try to get them taxed or outlawed.
In the spring of 2008, to the great consternation of people who were completely ignorant of all of these things, some of these now gigantic insurance schemes began to unravel. By fall, the unraveling could no longer be hidden even from the mainstream propaganda media, and more and more massive losses, staggering losses, began to pile up as first the real estate market and then the derivatives market began to fall apart.
So, the banks/insurers/credit-card-issuers, who can never get enough of our money, not even if they have all of it, pulled the greatest scam of all - they went back to their favorite toys, the lawmakers of the land, and convinced (most likely through covert bribery, also known as campaign contributions, overt bribery and outright blackmail) them to cover their losses with "tax money" (really just paper printed by the biggest insurance scam artist of all, the Federal Reserve, whose money is not even real money) because they had no prayer of being able to do so themselves.
After all, a lot of them were too busy going on multi-million dollar luxury cruises and buying expensive cars, land or other property that was also losing its value at a staggering rate.
Now we, the taxpayers of the United States, are getting stuck with a bill that has been predicted may run higher than $25 TRILLION, which is just less than half of the current market value of the entire resources of planet Earth, and enough to enrich every nation on the planet except - oh, yeah, U.S.
That's what insurance is all about.
Come back soon, when I'll talk about just how wonderful a thing health insurance is and why we need to reform it so the insurance companies can make even more money!
Just my $0.02, and not even worth that much (in 1960's equivalent copper pennies) any more....
Saturday, January 9, 2010
How long does this boot-up take already???
In an off-topic discussion in one of my groups, we sort of got into one of those Linux vs. Windows issues, which is really unfair to Windows, but that's not my point here. Yes, in case you didn't know it already, I am a huge fan of free software, and I use CentOS (http://centos.org) on most of my computers.
One of the issues I usually point out in this regard is the difference in perceived boot-up time between Windows and Linux. My usual comment on this is that it usually takes longer for Linux to boot than Windows, or at least it looks that way.
The caveat here is that Windows does not really boot up as fast as it appears to because, in fact, after it looks like it has come up to your login screen and is waiting for you to log in, it is actually still doing a lot of background task initiation behind the scenes. There's also the incredibly long Windows log in time, which is longer for every icon on your desktop, every element in your quick launch bar and every tool running in the background, especially the ones you can see in the notification bar. (If you don't believe me, run the task manager, enable it to see all users and count the number of processes that are running, or watch it go. Better yet, add it to your startup group and watch how long it takes after you log in before the activity dies down to mostly idle. You'll be amazed.)
With that long winded intro aside, today I was notified of a new kernel for my CentOS installation. I updated to the new kernel and timed both the boot sequence (from the point where the screen went blank, which is actually a second or two before the real reset occurs, to the login screen). The last kernel came down on December 15, almost a whole month ago.
Boot time: 2:46 (yep, two minutes and forty-six seconds)
Login time: 0:21
I should add that the boot time was slightly longer than a simple reboot because I have a couple of modules in my kernel that are automatically rebuilt when a new kernel is installed, and this can take a fair number of seconds to perform during the boot (I didn't time that part).
On the other hand, I haven't needed to reboot since 12/15/09, including at least a hundred other updates that I've installed since then....
I now return you to your regularly scheduled program. :-)
One of the issues I usually point out in this regard is the difference in perceived boot-up time between Windows and Linux. My usual comment on this is that it usually takes longer for Linux to boot than Windows, or at least it looks that way.
The caveat here is that Windows does not really boot up as fast as it appears to because, in fact, after it looks like it has come up to your login screen and is waiting for you to log in, it is actually still doing a lot of background task initiation behind the scenes. There's also the incredibly long Windows log in time, which is longer for every icon on your desktop, every element in your quick launch bar and every tool running in the background, especially the ones you can see in the notification bar. (If you don't believe me, run the task manager, enable it to see all users and count the number of processes that are running, or watch it go. Better yet, add it to your startup group and watch how long it takes after you log in before the activity dies down to mostly idle. You'll be amazed.)
With that long winded intro aside, today I was notified of a new kernel for my CentOS installation. I updated to the new kernel and timed both the boot sequence (from the point where the screen went blank, which is actually a second or two before the real reset occurs, to the login screen). The last kernel came down on December 15, almost a whole month ago.
Boot time: 2:46 (yep, two minutes and forty-six seconds)
Login time: 0:21
I should add that the boot time was slightly longer than a simple reboot because I have a couple of modules in my kernel that are automatically rebuilt when a new kernel is installed, and this can take a fair number of seconds to perform during the boot (I didn't time that part).
On the other hand, I haven't needed to reboot since 12/15/09, including at least a hundred other updates that I've installed since then....
I now return you to your regularly scheduled program. :-)
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