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New York, 6:43 AM
Fri Nov 27
11 posts in the last 24 hours
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06/04/09
06/04/09
06/04/09
06/04/09
That's the problem with a 'gentleman's agreement'. Since you already know you're doing something shady, you have no way of knowing that your counterparty isn't being even more shady by 'only' hiring people who they 'say' approached them.
In fact, the only way an agreement like this will stick is if there's no (or virtually no) movement between the companies.
Unfortunately for the companies, this stuff is matter of very accessible record (as in tax records) so it shouldn't be too hard for the Feds to see if there was not only an unusually low amount of cross-hiring, but also the date at which that phenomena started, how quickly it became the norm, and if there have been any significant lapses along the way.
For companies that are all about search, tech, and data, these seems like extraordinarily dumb moves.
Reminder: being aggressively stupid counts as evil. Sorry, but it's true.
06/03/09
Once again, the Obama campaign did a lot of tough talk during the campaign and now find themselves hard pressed to turn those words into (substantive) action.
Might there be some collusion in this area? Sure. Is there likely to be a paper (or e-mail) trail no. Is it likely that some third, smaller, upcoming company is harmed by this in any way? No. In fact I'd say the smaller companies are blessed by the fact that these has-beens are doing all their job-hopping among the majors, dragging them down with their big salaries and small, re-cycled ideas.
There are so many ways that big business present a barrier to competition from smaller ones it could fill and encyclopedia. Instead they go after something nobody cares much about. In fact, any DOJ action in this area is sure to be a benefit to the Googles and Microsofts of this world.
We DO know that the DoJ and other agencies can't account for millions of dollars they spend each year. How about a scaled back accounting, just for IT expenditures:
(1) Every IT dollar spent on major vendors: IBM, Microsoft, Google, and the major Beltway bandits (they don't call them that for nothin').
(2) Publish the minutes (or best approximation) of every meeting DoJ purchasing people had with these vendors on pricing issues, delivery problems, etc., so that we can see exactly how you negotiate with these monopolies on purchases that taxpayers bear the brunt of.
I guarantee you if you can put enough information out there you won't have to pay anyone to track down problems with your own budget. And pairing back monopoly companies abuse of government spending will go a long way toward pairing back the monopoly power these companies have.
I dare ya.
06/03/09
PS: The Department of Homeland security will not disclose H visa information, such as how many applications were approved, nor will it provide the public copies of the forms businesses submit to apply for foreign temps. These are public information, and I am waiting to see if Obama will release this information. The Southern Poverty Law Center has been trying to get the DHS to divulge more of these public docs for years.
You can go to FLCDataCenter.com: [www.flcdatacenter.com]
And find out who in your city has applied for foreign temps in nice big downloadable XLS files, but the DHS (which actually issues these visas) has the data of how many of these approved applications resulted in visas issued.
06/03/09
06/03/09
06/03/09
04/12/09
04/12/09
There is no point of even mentioning the immigration debate when we have an immature hack taking credit, rising, just to crash it into the ground.
Zuckerberg didn't create facebook's success. Remember the bubble song? "Partly skill, mostly luck"
Flight school and MBA's exist for a reason. Zuckerberg barely could match an Indian at PHP and dropped out of college.
Media... It's amazing how if you add a prestigious school, followed by -dropout, it's as if they graduated valedictorian and are rampant successes.
He's just another idiot kid riding a bubble.
04/12/09
Less than 10% of immigrants admitted legally have any skills whatsoever, and that number would be cut way lower if you included undocumented immigrants. A miniscule, insignificant number have anything remotely like the skills of Sanjay Mavinkurve.
There's some wisdom in populist "dey took r jobs" talk, though it's more like "rapacious-greed-driven exploitation of dem took r jobs." There are good reasons to accept the poor, tired, huddled masses, but we need to rhetorically acknowledge what's really going on.
04/12/09
"Less than 10% of immigrants admitted legally have any skills whatsoever, and that number would be cut way lower if you included undocumented immigrants."
I would have to disagree with that, unless you are not counting the H2-A workers. Nearly every person picking produce in the fields in American today (at least in major commercial farming operations) is a foreign temp or an undocumented laborer.
04/12/09
Migrants didn't decide to declare $10,401 a year above the poverty line for a single person. Migrants don't complain that paying higher wages would be bad for the economy. The predominately Republican pro-business community has for years whittled away at wages and benefits under completely disproven supply side economic arguments.
These are the same folks that lobby for MORE unskilled workers because they know that they do not pay wages that an American can afford to take, so they opt for the indentured economic slave form abroad.
These aren't "jobs Americans won't do" (in the words of Georage Bush) -- these are jobs Americans can't afford to take because they don't offer living wages.
The growing dependence on immigrants to fill these gaps is not the fault of immigrants -- it's the fault of our entire system that says that $10,401 is considered above the poverty line.
If you want to know how wages are being suppressed for these jobs: head over to FLCDataCenter.com and compare the offered prevailing wage to the average wages paid for these jobs (data available at the DOL website).
The entire system is designed to favor economic slaves over Americans and the only reason why you can (still) get construction job in America today is thanks to the work of LIBERAL HISPANICS in Congress (the Hispanic Caucus) which actively opposes increasing quotas for non-agricultural visas.
04/12/09
We educate their children, as we should. Illegal immigration is not enhancing this country in any positive way.
04/12/09
04/12/09
04/12/09
H1-B is for people with college degrees (IT techies)
H2-A is for agricultural laborers (the guy who picks your lettuce)
H2-B is for non-agricultural laborers (the woman who removed the semen-stained sheets from your Marriott hotel suite. I say Marriott because this hotel chain in particular has spent 100s of thousands of $$ lobbying to increase H2-B visas quotas.)
So actually, a lot of those "illegals" aren't -- they're here legally just like that Indian IT guy -- doing, as Bush famously put it, "jobs Americans won't do."
(It has been a long standing Republican policy to increase visas quotas for lower-skilled workers because they complain less because they're "at will" and if they're fired they get deported, so they're not "uppity" like American workers and you can exploit them and not pay their overtime and you don't have to pay workmen's comp. So anyone who tries to tell you that Republicans are into protecting American jobs don't know what they're talking about. Republicans want to increase H2-B and H2-A visas quotas so they can hire eocnomic slaves instead of American citizens and pay them less. The stereotype of the hard working immigrants comes in part from the fact that they have fewer rights so they're more obedient to their masters who often hold their passports and who can deport them for any reasons at any time.)
BY the way, last September one camapign stop in Pennsylvania, Obama defended increasing H2-B visa quotas by saying America should have no problem with allowing people with technical skills into the country to work.
Fine, except for one small problem: Obama doesn't seem to know the difference between H1-B and H2-B visas.
So my point is that not every Mexican who is roofing a house or picking strawberries is here illegally.
04/12/09
But yeah, Republicans (and most Democrats for that matter) woudl really prefer to give all of these jobs over to lower-paid foreign temps who have fewer rights and entitlements.
04/12/09
04/12/09
04/12/09
04/12/09
04/12/09
04/12/09
What I cannot understand is why an international company needs to be situated in the US. The Canucks don't have fits and starts, and their banking system is humming along nicely, so why is this the center of the universe?
I know. In a word, snow. But there's video chat for the days you cannot leave the house.
04/12/09
Most security features are for the ease of mind of the property owner and the annoyance of the innocent.
04/12/09
04/12/09
04/12/09
Am I the only Jew, or person, in the Gawker house today?
::Peeks into Gawker medicine cabinet::
::Tries on Gawker stilettos and boa::
::Drinks copiously from Gawker wet bar; fills up nearly empty vodka bottle with water::
::Eats olives, left-over Chinese, spoonful of peanut butter, canned frosting from Gawker kitchen::
04/12/09
04/12/09
Now lets be real Jews and crack the Gakwer safe before the goys come back.. Yeidel Deidel..