I like their table/blob and queue storage, but maybe it's because it's relatively mature and the domain is well understood. Most of the comparable services from other providers are generic analogs.
I'm not sure I feel much different across Azure Cosmos and Aws Dynamo. It seems super-easy to get locked into a relatively expensive proprietary offering in each case.
Shouldn't STEM (and to a greater extent STEAM) refer to degrees that combine the component areas into a program and not a degree that is solely a single component?
Yes, I understand you do very little Chemistry or Physics in a Comp Sci program, but your fundamental building blocks are almost entirely pure Chem and Physics, even more so in engineering.
I mean, ultimately the response really should be:
1. The overall macro measures still support success rates of STEM trumping other areas of study,
2. All hype is not created equal; even within Comp Sci or Engineering there are winners and losers.
3. Use general trends and measures to guide your overall strategy, not set specific tactics
>> if people would want to quit after a week or kill themselves after a month of pair programming we would see a lot of backslash against it.
That's been my experience. Even at the few places I've been were some do pair programming it's a very rare occurrence. Occasionally upper management will stump for it, likely because they (a) don't actually program all day and (b) see it as some sort of kale-like super habit. None of my IC have ever pushed hard for regular sessions.
The same thing happens when you've been with a mobile/telecom/etc company for a long time. They milk you for every penny they can get and give all the promo pricing to new customers. The pay sales higher commissions for new sign-ups and treat existing loyal clients like garbage.
It really bugs me to have to waste the time to change providers for everything every ~2 years, but I'd feel like an idiot if I left thousands of dollars per year on the table. It's a stupid game, and companies are not immune.
solid comparison. There's a parallel here to the employee/consumer side too.
A telco wants new customers. The way to do it is price, but lose if they cut everyone's price by 20% to gain 10% more customers. So price selectively.
Companies want to hire the most when the market is best (that's why the market is good). That might require 20% higher salaries, but they don't want the whole salary bill to increase. So, they selectively "price" new hires (and usually also people who get competitive offers).
In both cases, this also increases tension. Employees/consumers realize that they can get more if they switch. But switching is effort, and not everyone will make the effort. Not everyone will get completing offers either, so from the company's perspective it will always be more expensive to price match the best offer and offer it to everyone.
Btw, it also works the other way, in bad markets. In bad labour markets, the salary you have is probably better than the salary you can get, and new hires earn less.
Here, the company management hears about low wages their competitors pay and fume that it's impossibly hard to lower salaries across the board.
Overall, I don't think it's that bad a thing. It seems stupid when you're caught in it. Why do I need to change jobs/bank/plans just to get "market rate?" Systemically though, it helps create dynamism.
You aren't supposed to in a job or Telco plan for life.
"Btw, it also works the other way, in bad markets. In bad labour markets, the salary you have is probably better than the salary you can get, and new hires earn less.
Here, the company management hears about low wages their competitors pay and fume that it's impossibly hard to lower salaries across the board."
ohhh, you're a young one, no? Companies do that all the time, by closing entire divisions, calling it "restructuring" and making your above the market salary disappear over night by re-branding the positions. That's how they do it legally. Fire you because your position doesn't exists anymore and hire you again if you want at a lower salary doing the same job with same tools and even same PC/chair.
Many companies have done the sums on this and have dedicated churn teams. If you call and tell them you're planning to leave because you can get a better deal elsewhere they'll often match or better it in order to retain you.
It's a bit iffy since if everyone did this all the time the incentive to advertise low rates gets removed. As an individual bonus, though, it means you don't need to do all the paperwork it takes to change providers.
Most of the time it's as easy as calling and asking the first person you get connect to if you can "speak to retentions". I've always been put straight through.
Some years ago, I accidentally ordered two new phones from different providers at the same time. AS I had a 14 day 'cool off' I phoned one company to cancel, as I didn't like that phone, and they offered me a much better deal. I then phoned the other to pretend to cancel and got a reduction in my bill there!
Take groceries as an example. My sister in law wants convenience. She rolls into Whole Foods on the way home from work and drops $50 on stuff for dinner. My wife is price sensitive... she does coupons and shops aggressively. Last year those savings yields almost $15k.
Over the ~8 years I've been a customer, my mobile provider has upgraded my free SMS/MMS plan from 5 hours and 5GB to unlimited hours and 40GB. The price has gone from ~$15 to ~$20 and that's it.
There's no way for me to get the same plan at that price if I was a new customer.
You are lucky. Sadly, this is very much the exception, although we can only hope it becomes more common. Human nature being what it is, people hate change, so companies can gouge existing users and offer incentives to new users to get them to change.
Recently my telecom has starting sending me regular texts (~3-6 months)
"We've improved our service, you now have X more mb/month"
"We've strengthened our infrastructure, your bill has been reduced from x/month to y/month, if you'd prefer more data you can reply with MOAR DATA to this text and we'll keep you at the same price and give you X more data."
Knowing that I'm continuing to upgrade while doing nothing increases my satisfaction and I haven't even shopped around since I switched to them.
I always call and ask politely for the latest offer to new customers, they always give it to me.
I did find it strange that I went to an energy rate comparison site and my current provider offered met 150 euros to stay for another year. Guess I should also call them every now and then.
I think it really depends on a couple of important variables, including cash flows and company management. Our private equity overlords care mostly about the macro goals that are generally well defined in advance (sales targets, M&A budgets, bonus pool) and our CEO has done this a few times so he has a track record of predictable returns, which is primarily what a PE fund wants, vs the hockey stick growth of VC money.
In this economic climate and especially outside of the US, PE gives you a lot of the benefits of going public without the extra scrutiny and reporting. I've seen several established companies in my industry forgo going public and unlock liquidity via private equity or sovereign wealth funds.
Why moral imperative? Perhaps you mean ethical or legal, but is not even legally required, so far as I know, that a corporation must maximize return to investors.
More broadly, society created the concept of the corporation and imbued it with valuable privileges such as limited liability and a potentially favorable tax regime. Some argue it would be morally reasonable to require it balance the interests of stakeholders.
tax evasion is illegal; tax minimization is lowering your tax burden using existing laws and is not illegal.
Governments should reduce the number of unintentional loopholes but (a) it's far easier to pass new laws than amend old ones, (b) if you change a law that an existing big domestic firm or voting block is exploiting they will let you know at the polls; with a new law you can sell it as "balanced fiscal justice - righting a great wrong by making big foreign multinationals pay their fair share!"
I'm definitely not against tax reform, my big concern is the common approach of new taxes as political theater without any honest attempt at simplification, broad application or coordination with other jurisdictions. All this tax is doing is targeting a small, low-vote target that will figure out a complicated way to shift taxable revenue into a different jurisdiction, perpetuating the exact problem it supposedly addresses.
> without any honest attempt at simplification, broad application or coordination with other jurisdictions.
The problem with that is that the other jurisdictions have no interest in closing tax loopholes. The irish bend over backwards to let Apples unique sheme qualify as double irish (their tax office had to issue several private rulings) and they had no interest in getting rid of the double irish itself either. For a tax haven making even a cent in taxes they wouldn't have otherwise gotten while costing a different country a million is a win.
You can see the impact of that crackdown in their tax receipts and tax to GDP ratio. Government revenue from Double Irish tax arrangements was fully 5% of their GDP.
I could live in a world with a little less tax avoidance by the rich. So in this case I don't see the upside to a country violating long standing trade deals to make a little more on the side.
>> places like Twitter and Medium that remain open and free.
WHAT? Perhaps only in the most literal sense of "they don't make you pay money to read", but that's not really what people mean when they talk about open and free...
People are starting to see through this BS that Wilsons of the world been preaching and profiting from for a quarter century. I only care for my money, not your job. I also prefer surveillance driven ad model that was never free and will never be free.
Microsoft has also demonstrated a far stronger commitment to developers over many decades compared with Oracle, who never sell or promote that far away from the C-suite.
Realy? I remember pretty much every development stack for windows being dropped and abandoned (leaving devs in the lurch) time after time on windows. XNA, Silverlight, WinRT, etc.
It's easy to make MS look ok when you compare them to the horror show that is Oracle
I'm not sure I feel much different across Azure Cosmos and Aws Dynamo. It seems super-easy to get locked into a relatively expensive proprietary offering in each case.