It depends on the company, honestly.

I do not have a degree, but thankfully my break came from an industry where that is essentially a check to get through the door. Once you're through the door, they don't really look for it much anymore.

I had to take a crap help desk job, while working side projects that I could pitch to my management. Thankfully I had management that was willing to sit down and listen to me, and understand the value that what I could do would add to different positions. From there it's been a matter of gathering more skills and certifications to continue advancement, and I work for who is potentially the greatest manager I've ever had the pleasure to even interact with.

Didn't have much of an opportunity to go to college (life events at the time I graduated high school seriously complicated my ability to do much of anything) and I've certainly built up my career the hard way. If you can land a career without the massive amount of debt associated with getting a degree, it's a great thing going into later life (married, 2 kids, own house and cars, etc).

Interestingly enough, I also live in West Virginia. Not the same area of the state or company involved, just had to smile a bit when I read that bit.

For me it's not about spending more time working for the company. It's the commute time not being a consideration in the working calculation, which is a tricky situation.

My daily commute is roughly an hour and a half each direction, not because of distance but because of congestion. So I have to travel to the office by 8 am to be on morning meetings, work/attend meetings throughout the 9 hour day, then commute home. All together I am gone twelve and a half to thirteen hours a day, when 90% of my job is development work, and all the meetings are through Skype or just plain old teleconference.

If I was allowed to work from home, I would be on the 9 hours a day, but actually be there with my wife and two kids a hell of a lot more than I am now. Currently it's commute, work, commute, eat, sleep. Almost zero leisure time as weekends are occupied with things that I didn't have time to do during the week (yard work, vehicle maintenance, etc.)

I used to work from home, and was dragged back into the office. What I do is specialized and I do not rely on others, nor are they reliant on me, so there is zero reason for me to need to come into the office unless I need to run testing against client equipment. I used to have extensive test equipment at home and could be reasonably assured that my code would work without ever leaving my home. All of that equipment had to be returned to the company and is now sitting in a giant pile with the rest of the returned testing equipment no one is using.

No I'm not irreplaceable (there are plenty of others in my company that perform the same job for other clients) but being in an office gains me nothing, and has actually made me considerably more unhappy and less productive.

The issue I have with the whole situation is there does not seem to be a middle ground. Management either wants as many people out of the office as possible (regardless of the viability for that in most cases) or wants as many people in the office as possible (regardless of the actual need.) There needs to be more consideration.

Previous company I worked for had the stated idea of putting their offices in a densely packed downtown location. The issue is (I was aware of the financials on this) that there were several areas in the suburbs with more than adequate office space at far cheaper prices.

The reason the plan fell through? Some of the old timers (people within 5 years of retirement) would have been inconvenienced by having to go an extra 15 minutes to work. It had nothing to do with real estate requirements and everything to do with the vocal minority complaining. Everyone else actually was excited for the prospect of the other location.

They're at the helm, but still reading the release documents on how to steer while trying to avoid agreeing to an overbearing EULA.

That is an awesome list. It's also a great way to get a headache if you're not expecting it. Dear lord, that's a lot of text all at once.

Wish I had mod points right now.

I've spoken to people over the years that view pretty much any kind of government regulation as a terrible idea that needs to be destroyed. Noting that there are indeed some regulations that exist simply because someone's bank account received a strange influx from an anonymous donor (even if not personal accounts, campaign contributions from lobbyists for extra consideration applies as well), some regulations do in fact exist because bad things had happened and whatever industry in question failed to correct the problem itself.

Sometimes the free market really is just driven entirely by greed, they don't care who they're hurting, and the government does periodically need to step in and correct the problem.

Where I live, West Virginia, it's a phone call. That's the extent of the waiting period.

Actually, being a concealed carry holder myself, I don't even have to wait for that anymore.

No, I'm not a gun nut (own a total of one pistol), mine is specifically for personal protection since all the meth and heroine traffic started causing assault and robbery cases to pop up everywhere.

I would move, but it's incredibly cheap to live here, and where my actual house is I get plenty of opportunity to know when someone is coming to visit before they actually get there. It's just when I go into town.

I went with Strongbad, The S is for Sucks.

And now the contractors in the cubes around me think I'm insane, after an extremely loud outburst of laughter.

Worth it.

I'm sure someone with decision making power will buy this and force implementation on some unfortunate soul.

Why have the opportunity to get applications from multiple sources when you can restrict everyone to only purchasing from Microsoft! Who cares if they have made available the actual programs we would like to use, when there are others with half as much functionality (and the added benefit of Microsoft getting a cut of the sales from) they can force you to use?

None of them seem to understand what it is they're talking about very well, and what they do probably understand they're paid to lie about.

Looking at campaign contributions for those on the list, it's not really hard to figure out why. The link you provided is a perfect place to start, and none of the others on the sponsorship list are any better than Cruz.

I don't know, that IoT barcalounger does sound pretty appealing...

Thank you. That question has also been rattling around in my head.

The best I could do was to stumble upon this which states that it appears they gave the money back to the investors, essentially just kicking them out. Would make sense since it does appear that they were just causing the company to hemorrhage money.

We seem to apply this same principle to business. You fail, just reverse the direction of the fall so that you somehow still succeed.

Ah, was not aware of this. Only ran it for the trial period and cancelled (not enough time to play games anymore to justify the cost). Thank you!