i can't let this one go by

[rone]

I'm guessing you're "stealth" because you don't have the stones to face the brunt of ridicule over your outrageously low offer of $55k for someone to do *everything* for your office.  You're detailing work that will take, at a minimum, 14 hours a day.  No one person is going to be able to work that much and do a GOOD job at it.

Get a goddamned clue.  Hell, get a six-pack of clues.  Hire enough people for the job and PAY THEM WHAT THEY'RE WORTH.  You need two people: an IT guru and an office manager.  You are NOT going to get anyone worth more than shit for $55k, in either job, let alone both.  Your company is in a crucial stage, and getting an idiot or an incompetent now is going to hamstring your company.  You will regret it, guaranteed.  You should be looking at about $70k for the office manager and $85k for the IT person, MINIMUM.  Don't fucking argue with me!  Just fucking do it.

A dog walker?  You people are fucking insane.  It's not 1998 anymore.  You aren't going to get naïve chumps who will work for stock options.  Get real!

rone

Comments

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

That'd be an ideal job for my cousin (he's 25) if it was outside of Detroit. In San Francisco? ...eh, maybe if it was paying twice what they're offering. But do you really want to be paying your dog-walker $50+/hr? Doesn't seem efficient.

You're numbers are close, but I'd fudge 'em some. I think they could probably get away with a $55K office manager, but they're probably looking at a $100K IT jockey. "can figure out how to setup any type of technology, are a master at a Linux command-line, can setup an Exchange server, know how to configure a VPN firewall while allowing SIP packets to properly navigate NAT" is $75K right there, and when you add in "don’t mind being the guy called for that emergency. Yeah, at 3AM. For real.", I add in at least another $20K.

"We're outrageously smart, meta-cognitive renegade thinkers"? I read that as "Our business model is 'sound crazy long enough to attract VC, then issue press releases just long enough to get bought out'."

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

2wanda was an office manager throughout her dotcom years, and she made more than $55k then, and for the work she did, she was definitely underpaid.

I think $20k for being on call, even 24/7, is way too much. You aren't going to have that many damn emergencies when there's less than 15 people in the company, assuming you're not an idiot setting stuff up with beige shitboxes and Fedora. Then again, they should probably be shooting for a do-all genius instead of an IT guy. But i think we've already established that they don't have the right idea for getting their business off the ground. I give them 10 months before they burn through their money on foosball tables, sushi lunches, and executive seminars.

Meta-cognitive... the fuck does that mean? Shit, now i'm wishing i'd've been less helpful and more abusive. Fucking idiots. They aren't going to be bought; they're going to crash and burn and picked apart for spare parts. It's all they deserve.

[vatine]

$55k? Per year? For a decently qualified IT guy? That's, like 20p in real money! (well, OK, it's about 25kUKP; still not worth getting out of bed for). I pull 75k UKP prior to "overtime" and "on-call allowance" and I get 25 days off (plus bank holidays) each year and I'm borderline underpaid.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, if they just wanted an IT guy for $55k, that would be merely laughable (and i've seen those... hell, there was one where they wanted a Director of IT for $55k). It's that they want someone who does IT and someone to manage their office, which, from the sound of it, is a fucking kindergarten. And they think they're SOOOO smart and edgy and i really ought to find out who these people are so i can drive to their office and throw at them all the dog crap i collected from my back yard.

[kodi]

It's not 1998 anymore.

If they're telling the truth that they're a group of 8 idiots who plan to develop "software and hardware products for the movie, television, and consumer gaming markets," and they have enough "venture backing" to expand to 25 people by the end of the year, I think they might actually be living in 1998. Nothing there makes sense at all.

Smart and edgy

[rotojeff.livejournal.com]

And they think they're SOOOO smart and edgy and i really ought to find out who these people are so i can drive to their office and throw at them all the dog crap i collected from my back yard.

This is exactly the vibe I got as well. They remind me of the dot-com that bought our company in '97. Yeah, we're going to vastly underpay you, but you should still feel honored working for us....

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Hey, kids! Let's put on a company!

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

I think Rone is planning on going out there to paint their fuckin' wagon.

[vatine]

Yeah, he'd be in trouble if he fucked their painting wagon.

[haineux.livejournal.com]

"Meta-Cognitive" literally means "thinking about thinking."

It is a term used by behavioral psychologists to refer to an activity people rarely do. For instance, if you ask someone "how did you come up with that answer," >90% of the time, the person will make up an explanation that has little to do with how they actually did it. The remaining 1-10% of the time, the thoughtful ones will actually think about how they thought up the idea.

The other common use of the term was in the Artificial Intelligence fad a while back. AI researchers would often say they were thinking about thinking. Of course, they were not. They were making up stories about how they imagine thinking happens, and then pretending that their super-wonderful program would magically figure it out even if they couldn't themselves.

(OK, there were a few exceptions, but I personally do not think Doug Hofstadter was one of them. He was writing funny essays and books where this meta-cognition was supposedly taking place. Goedel Escher Bach is a good book full of entertaining stories, and it's reall ygood at explaining the Incompleteness Theorem.)

In this case here, I suspect the term is being conflated with "Meta-cranial inversion" -- ie these people, if they bit down hard, would bite their own necks off because that's JUST HOW FAR they've got their heads up their asses....

I actually can think of a couple of people I know who would take this job for $55K per year -- as long as one of the slyly-hinted "non-standard perks" is all the FDA-certified drug-grade cocaine and meth-amphetamine they could consume.

On the other hand, knowing these pals of mine, as soon as the company slipped them some of that baby-laxitive-cut shit, they'd go get a machete and carve up the company dog, starting at the foot pads and working up, as a gentle reminder that their employment was not "at will" of the employer.

Seriously, I wish you would find out who these people are, and change their craigslist ad to mention their address, phone, and emails. These employers are REALLY in need of a learning experience.

Also, I think I'll use "Do you LIKE to be woken up at 3 AM to fix an emergency?" as an interview question. Anyone who says "yes" gets 15 seconds to convince me that they were lying through their teeth or I call security and have them escort this trespasser the hell off company property.

For me, it's the "we're science fiction fans" ...

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

People can be s.f. fans without putting it in a job spec. Once they put it in the job spec., you know they're going to expect non-stop jabber about libertarian politics and new age economic theories, low pay because working for them is just so cool, requests for bringing them stuff at 9 p.m. at night while you're at work, without a car, which means that two employees have to leave work to make sure your whims are met. You'll collect everyone who couldn't get a job at Google or, here, Comcast, and the Feds will nail you for not paying unemployment compensation taxes when you finally sell the money-losing company to someone who lays off half your staff before it goes bankrupt for stupidly acquiring money losing companies -- and some actually intelligent Southerners from Charlotte, NC, figure out how to actually manage the company and make money with it by not putting any of the original crew on their board of directors.

Bet they'll find someone who's bipolar or who will steal every machine that's not actively in the network, or someone who is capable of faking experience, or someone who's so obscessive about work that he sleeps in the NOC so he can have his fatal heart attack without going home.

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

Great, now I'm seeing Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood singing "We're gonna fuck the wagon! We're gonna fuck the wagon!"

OK GO, save me!

[vatine]

Be careful to use a kevlar condom, exhaust pipes are frequently rather hot and may cause tissue damage. [ I wonder if I've out-rone'd rone? ]

[wisn.livejournal.com]

They'll get applicants hand-over-fist. And they'll hire somebody who has the proper combination of innate competence and poor self-esteem to make them feel that they just have to cast their net wider next time after the poor person flames out after nine months of playing the pissboy to a roomful of entitled, coked-up louches whose highly tuned minds are far too important to be distracted by implementing anything or, hell, getting up off the couch to pee.

That explains it all.

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

They think Bruce Sterling's "Ivory Tower (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v434/n7034/pdf/434806.pdf)" is reality and utopia.

[sabinablue.livejournal.com]

As partner to a sysadmin who logged something like 90 hours in 5 days last week, that ad makes me gag. I detest sales and marketing types.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Sheeit, schools pay at LEAST $20k more for just the IT side of that stuff.

[tskirvin.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly certain I'd require $100k+ per year to handle that kind of job in central Illinois. The Bay Area? I'd probably consider it for $150-200k, so I could sub-contract bits out.

Idiots.

[wisn.livejournal.com]

See, the funny thing is: The more broadly versatile you are, the lower you get paid.

Anybody who can admin a server, design from scratch in Photoshop, and implement a commerce site in Rails is only worth maybe $45-55k/year here in Michigan. But somebody who's employed purely to perform a specific subset of tasks involving a proprietary plugin in Photoshop will pull down $75k/year, minimum, at one of the ad agencies in the Detroit area. And work fewer hours, too.

A prime rule of the polymath is that you'll only get paid according to your least-worthy skill, because your employer believes that anything your employer doesn't specifically understand is a simplistic, commodity role, in contrast to his own very difficult responsibilities. The job posting Rone linked to? They're only paying for the dog walker. And they're not kidding about having a dog to walk.

[plorkwort.livejournal.com]

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, you can hire an entry-level librarian (fresh out of a master's program) for under 40k. But I guess walking a dog has more complex requirements.

[joepro.livejournal.com]

I just think it's cool that you guys just type craigslist.org, and the sfbay area comes up by default. Did you ever realize how lucky you are? Also, you have probably been using this awesome website for years, I just discovered it and am addicted. It's funny how everything sounds so great on craigslist, even a glorified dog-walking job. Very funny stuff.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

The more broadly versatile you are, the lower you get paid.

I think you just put your finger on why the average starting salary for a librarian is on par with that of an experienced secretary.

Goddammit, I should've gone into an area of IT that no one except the other people who do it understands, like Mr. Darcy did.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Heh, I put in my comment above before I saw this. It's true. I am in fact an entry-level librarian making under 40k (although the university I work for is known for underpaying people, because our endowment is tiny).

I hate that being a determined generalist counts against me.

[wolffire.livejournal.com]

Rants like these...and the comments...this is why I love reading your LJ. I'm gonna have to get down to Cali for a couple of weeks some time.

[velvet-wood.livejournal.com]

They won't get an IT guy _alone_ for that. And any IT guy who can _do_ everything they want _may_ be willing to do it for $54K (but not in freaking SanFrancisco where it can cost $1500 a month for an efficiency apartment!) but they sure as hell aren't going to be walking the damned dog and assembling furniture. Frankly, my male could do all they want IT wise and more, and I'd rather pick up cans on the side of the street than let him take such a position... that's a career killer, right there, and rather degrading to boot. Anyone who would do that for that isn't worth that.

Plus, it's just stupid. IT guys are high-paid for a reason. No one else in the place, frequently, can do what they do. Whereas you can hire someone to come in and clean and empty the trashcans and stuff for a tiny fraction of what the hourly pay for the techy is. And in that kind of environment, the tech is _always_ going to have more of his own work to do than he can possibly finish, so every hour he spends wasting time on crap like picking up coffee and emptying the trash costs you time he'd be spending on important things, and therefore costs you money... especially if he's ethical and putting in overtime to try to get _everything_ done. He spends an hour doing untrained labor, then an hour later on doing what he should have been doing at, let's say, $20/hour (cheap as hell, especially there, but let's say he's desperate) so that's $40 the company spent. Hire someone at min. wage and let him do his job, and you've spent $26 instead. Thus these people prove that they are total idiots, doomed to failure, and have no basis for their arrogance and so are likely completely intolerable to work with or for. Ugh.