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Comment Re:Yes, Clorox, you ARE at fault! (Score 1) 89

It's true, in most cases, upper management and bean counters do not understand how things work.

But as much as it may annoy us, both the engineering row and the executive row have a purpose. Without engineering, you'd have nothing to sell. (Witness companies that laid off their engineering staff as a cost savings measure, then went under when their queue emptied.) But without the executive row, you may have something to sell, but no way to sell it. Then the company gets bought and gutted. Or just closes its doors.

Comment Re:H1b workers are more cost effective (Score 1) 162

Speaking as someone who's entire department was gradually replaced with H1b workers (not complaining at all, as it led to a better paying job) I observed as the replacement process went on, that the incoming workers tended to work 70 - 80 hour weeks, essentially living in their cubicles, and tended to be more completely under control of their H1b boss. They tended to have no local family, once a year going back to their respective countries to be with family for a few weeks, before coming back for another year of nothing but work and sleep. Essentially mid-salary indentured servitude.

So, if costs go down and productive hours go up, and (I think) overhead goes down, (as, I believe they were contractors rather than full time, so reduced benefits costs (this is speculation as it's outside my visibility)) why wouldn't a company encourage this?

And how does this situation benefit the US work force?

Among other things, Indentured servants who have no power to negotiate will do illegal tasks for their boss or be sent home.

It doesn't benefit the US work force at all. Just pointing out the perception that it benefits US companies.

Illegal tasks like cooking data, as just one example.

Combine this with diploma mill issues, and the company can end up with a department ill-equipped to do the job, ill-equipped to communicate results, poor ethics with little accountability, and just generally a way to siphon off funds. But it looks good on paper.

Comment Re:The real reason why companies like the H-1B vis (Score 1) 162

"1. No limits on working time. Salaried employees end up volunteering for the company they work for after 40 hours. If they don't work this unpaid overtime, they will be subject to progressive discipline up to and including termination."

And termination often isn't a matter of just finding another job but having to go back to country of origin, where jobs are scarce to nonexistent. This makes the threat of termination a huge, career-threatening thing, which tends to promote servitude. Which makes the manager's job easier and is more beneficial to the company.

Essentially slave labor.

A company I worked for gradually replaced the entire division with H1b workers, and I witnessed first hand that these workers essentially lived in their cubicles, occupying them all hours of the day and night. This was expected of them, on pain of being sent home.

A simple change to the labor laws, limiting the number of hours a salaried employee can be expected to work to say, 50 hours, on pain of high penalties, (or something similar) might go far to cut the heart out of this H1b scam.

Comment H1b workers are more cost effective (Score 1) 162

Speaking as someone who's entire department was gradually replaced with H1b workers (not complaining at all, as it led to a better paying job) I observed as the replacement process went on, that the incoming workers tended to work 70 - 80 hour weeks, essentially living in their cubicles, and tended to be more completely under control of their H1b boss. They tended to have no local family, once a year going back to their respective countries to be with family for a few weeks, before coming back for another year of nothing but work and sleep. Essentially mid-salary indentured servitude.

So, if costs go down and productive hours go up, and (I think) overhead goes down, (as, I believe they were contractors rather than full time, so reduced benefits costs (this is speculation as it's outside my visibility)) why wouldn't a company encourage this?

Comment grandfather was an eyewitness (Score 2) 47

Once years ago at a family gathering, some of us were on the roof seeing if we could spot Mir going overhead.

While we were waiting, grandfather, who had a draft deferment during WWII due to being in the defense industry, told a story whereby his foreman told the team that something special was about to happen. They all went to the roof and he directed them to look east. Grandfather said that about a half hour later there was a brilliant flash on the horizon. Nothing was said about what it was, but later he pieced together that it must have been the first test in New Mexico.

No idea if this is true, but it's a neat story.

Comment I think I'm ok... (Score 2) 67

I don't house any password in any utility owned by Microsoft or use Microsoft --- anything --- for autofill. (And no, I don't use Edge at all.) Unless I'm not understanding something, this should pass me by.

However, I strongly suspect that Fred and Ethyl Enduser may give up computers over this.

If you need some side work, advertising helping regular users straighten out their credentials after this change might be profitable.

Comment I think it depends (Score 1) 83

I've noticed lately that the person starts by saying something engaging and personal, "Hi, how are you? What shall I call you?" or something like that, before going on script. It helps disarm people too used to dealing with automation.

I try to help things along by asking the person where they're based, and asking what the weather is like there. Sure, that's information an AI can provide, but when they're off script you can tell if it's a human. At least, this year.

Comment So, help me out here (Score 1) 54

Let's say I have a Brother multifunction printer in a home office. The printer, like everything else on the network, has been assigned an unroutable IP address. (It's a static address, so it doesn't change, but it's still unroutable.)

There is a router/firewall between the home office and the fiber modem.

It seems to me that a bad guy would have to bust into the router first before they could even reach the printer. Or maybe a MITM attack pretending to be a printer update?

I'm sure there's situations where a known admin password (sigh... that again... when will companies learn?) could be critical, but I don't see it as a problem fro most people.

What am I overlooking?

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