Contact me: [max] [at] [howtobepoor.com]
If you’re like me on this glorious day, you’re hammered by noon. The food is plentiful, the Texas weather is beautiful (73 and sunny), and you get to avoid the “entire family” by just spending time with your girl.
On moments like these you realize life is not as shitty as you previously thought. Enjoy yourselves.
So I have this friend Mike.
About 4 months ago Mike got a job at Hewlett-Packard as a database developer. However, he was not immediately brought in on staff and he is still a contractor through a third-party agency. Mike enjoys himself at HP – the people he works with are nice, the work is challenging, and the work campus is only a couple of miles from his house. The temp agency is paying him $40,000 per year, but realistically he is making more like $60,000 because of the overtime, which bothers some people, but not Mike. He is pretty happy with his job, citing “corporate politics” as the only major downside.
Recently, he’s been corresponding with a small software company allegedly poised for explosive growth because of the owner’s previous experiences, an avalanche of new clients, and the high skill level of the programmers on staff. Because Mike is proficient in PHP, SQL, PERL, MySQL, and other open source software packages, he was asked to take an aptitude test, which he passed with a 95-percentile score. Mike also did really well on the interview, and got an offer letter.
Mike negotiated a stable salary of $60,000 per year plus 10% commission from existing projects (if completed on time) divided up between a few members of his team. Historically, an average bonus is around $1,000 a month. The projects range from Google Maps API-driven real estate sites to media projects with national exposure to manufacturing processes automation. Mike was told that because the company and the people working for it are young, they are in the process of hiring not just coders, but future company leadership.
Mike did some checking, and the company has enough retainer payments and recurring clientele billings that it’s not “going under” any time soon. The future projects look a lot more interesting than those in HP, the staff is fun (they play Halo and have paintball tournaments in spare time), and the opportunity for professional growth is there. The mentality and atmosphere reminded Mike about what he heard about companies like Google – very personal, laid-back, easy-going. Pet projects are encouraged and given immediate resources if approved by the rest of the team.
Basically, Mike has to make a decision about how to better his career: stay at HP and grind it out, or take a chance and see what happens. He realizes there’s upsides and downsides to everything:
STAY AT HP:
+ Close to home
+ Established himself well already
+ Possible moderate pay increase
+ Possible permanent offer within several months
+ Projects are semi-fun
- Corporate politics suck ass
- Having 5 bosses to report
- Being a contractor (uncertain future)
LEAVE HP:
+ Fun projects
+ Informal atmosphere (no politics – get in, get out)
+ Stability
+ Reliable paychecks
+ Performance-based, immediate advancement potential
- 40 minute drive through stop-n-go
- Long-time girlfriend will need a car
- Severing established ties with friends at HP and temp agency
It all comes down to having balls and taking the plunge, or grinding it out safely. When he asked me about this dilemma, I didn’t know what do say. Mike’s next move is to waive the offer letter in front of his temp agency manager in an attempt to beat a raise out of him.
What would you do?
So I haven’t been using Microsoft Windows for about a week. I’m using an Ubuntu Linux flavor called Kubuntu (coo-bun-too). Ubuntu is a South African ethic or ideology focusing on people’s allegiances and relations with each other [wikipedia]. Linux people, being a bunch of hippies, adopted the word for this free and pretty distro of Linux.
For the purpose of this blog, we’ll examine the ‘free’ part, although it is also very pretty. And fast. IF you can get it to work.
If you were to buy a copy of MS Windows, you’d probably shell out $50-150 for a copy of Windoze 2000/XP. Of course, you could still just “borrow it from a friend” or about a million “friends” on the Internet, but if you want to be legit, you’d buy it. You would then proceed to install it, along with a third party firewall, anti-virus, Ad-Aware, System Mechanic, MS Office, and a dozen other apps everyone uses. You’d be just another Windows user not caring about what an “operation system” even is. You’d just be a hundred bucks lighter, even though you probably don’t even use Windows-specific programs all the time.
There’s another way to keep Microsoft from getting its grubby hands onto your hundred bucks. Install a Linux distro. Along with security, scalability, speed, and power, you’ll also get some of the more recent developments, like appeal, sleekness, and prettiness. I’m serious, as a long-time Windows user, I can’t take my eyes off the custom gradients and translucencies I’ve set up for my desktop. I’m not posting any pictures because you’ll have to see for yourself.
If you just surf the web, use MS Office, pay bills online, and do other generic tasks, you must try Linux. If you own a slow(ish) machine, you must try Linux. If you are worried about security, you must try Linux. After all, the author of Linux, Linus Torvalds is an official hero now.
Not all is rosy, though. Linux is not a neat little “Plug-n-Play” package yet. Thus, there’s a catch 22 – if you are not very techy, you’ll get all excited, burn a CD, reboot, try to boot into Linux, then try to get online, and QUIT after the system asks you about a DNS server … and never try Linux again … and if you’re a geek, you already know about Linux and possibly run it yourself.
That’s the problem, in my opinion – you still need to be somewhat of a geek to properly install and configure your distro to use it daily. However, with a little willing and a little learning, you can be excited about your computer again!
I run Firefox, use OpenOffice, play online games … hell, I even managed to install Citrix to get into my work account just like I would with a Windows machine. This very post is being typed from a Firefox for Linux window.
So what are tangible benefits of Linux? Get ‘em all here.
I’ve been rocking my nice corporate gig for a few months now. As a military brat, I’m used to constant change of scene, so this transition from a small town company to a big IT firm went pretty smoothly.
However, I’m starting to notice that if people would just leave me alone for about 80% of the workday, I’d accomplish miraculous feats. Ask any developer – there is nothing more annoying in the middle of working through a long stored procedure than a user asking about why his/her VLOOKUP doesn’t work.
So I made this pie chart of a typical work day.
If I had to hire a bunch of IT people and force them to work on a variety of tasks, I’d give them little carpeted roofless rooms with stereos, TVs, soft slippers, mini-fridges, huge bean bags, and other objects of their choice that would make their 7-to-6 workday a little more enjoyable.
I’m hearing working for Google is exactly like that …
Before online banking, saving money was a pain. You had to carefully plan how much and how regularly you are going to stash a chunk of your paycheck, sometimes you had to handle cash and those annoying deposit tickets. However, in this day and age practically every institution is giving you the ability to move money around fairly easily. Therefore, ignoring your stash is pretty much unforgivable … a lot more so now than during the pre-electronic money transfer days.
So how I am being a good pirate by continuously contributing money to my stash? By using recurring transfers, that’s how.
Once I’ve reached the point in my life where not having that fifty bucks in the bank would guarantee that I would bounce a $15 check, I immediately set up a recurring transfer from my main account into my Scottrade investment account.
Just point them to your account, and they will happily pull out whatever amount you specify at desired intervals (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc). I have them pull out around $100 every paycheck (every week) and I’ve gotten so used to it, I wouldn’t have it any other way. So much better than hoard the $400 somewhere, then write a check to Scottrade at the end of the month, ew. Actually, once you give them the logins to your banking website, they make it almost scary easy, especially when they tell you how much money you got in other bank accounts …
Bank of America is glad to accomodate your desire to hoard as well:
After a confirmation email or two, just punch in the name of the other bank, and BoA will send money these pronto.
However, I think Emigrant Direct takes the cake – their external transfers were the easiest to set up, and they post the same day.
Same schpiel – point to an account, press Submit.
I’m telling you, there’s no excuse to set up a recurring transfer one day before your paycheck gets Direct Deposited. What??? Your paycheck is not Direct Deposited???