It isn't the push-button setup that you've built, but PiHole is a decent option for this purpose as well.
Occasionally I add social media sites (including HN) to the block list.
It's very easy to bypass when I really want/need to, but it does cut down the more unconscious "CMD + T - news/redd/face - enter" moments that happen when I'm bored.
Prevents the occasional unnecessary mindless scroll by creating a couple extra steps.
That's exactly right - It's always good to put roadblocks and increase resistance to bad habits, and take away roadblocks and decrease resistance to good habits. It works better for me than cold turkey.
- Salt water is poured into a reservoir that is exposed to the sun.
- The salt water evaporates due to the heat from the sun.
- Leaving the salt behind (and most other impurities), the water vapor rises until it lands on the glass and condenses into water droplets.
- After enough builds up on the glass, gravity pulls the water droplets down the glass until they drop into a separate reservoir - not exposed to the sun. This water is desalinated and drinkable
It's efficient, cheap, slow, space consuming, simple and works well.
> "+$50K for candidates with a long track record of .NET and Oracle work"
This also allows discrimination based on "race, gender, and other things" since "long track record" is completely open to interpretation and if the interviewers are already operating in bad faith, they can find any BS reason to try and undermine an interviewee.
"$100-$150k DOE" is exactly the same, if not clearer, than "$100k (+$50k if XYZ)"
For those operating in good faith, it gives an honest comp range depending on experience.
For those who aren't, a format change on job postings isn't going to do anything.
In the real world, companies can't go down to the local "Employee Store" and order up a 12 year engineer with a PhD whenever they want, even if that's what they would prefer.
In many cases hiring is an organic process where a company weighs options based on what candidates are available to them at the time, their budget, timeframe, and goals.
A 2 year junior dev may be able to accomplish the same goal as the 12 year one, but much slower due to lack of experience, and you don't know if you'll find either until you start interviewing.
This is why many job postings fairly say "Comp: DOE" or provide a salary range.
More transparent comp is great for avoiding lowballing and discrimination (which both suck), but sometimes one employee actually is a more valuable contributor than another even if they have the same title. This is why I personally find the idea of a "salary range" completely fair, but also welcome to be ignored during the offer phase.
If John Carmack and a junior dev both apply to the role of "Software Engineer", I see zero reason why a company shouldn't be allowed to offer him a substantially higher comp due to his experience. He'll likely accomplish the same goals more quickly, more efficiently, with better code practices in mind.
Having to put it under the guise of "a different position" is just befuddling to the process. It's the kind of unnecessary legislation that pushes companies to find shady ways of solving problems.
>In the real world, companies can't go down to the local "Employee Store" and order up a 12 year engineer with a PhD whenever they want, even if that's what they would prefer.
I have hired many employees throughout my career, and never once have we posted a position for which we would have taken a junior engineer or someone with 12 years experience and a PhD. Even at small startups. Not that we weren't hiring both types of people at the same time. But we weren't hiring them for the same position. At my current company we have open positions on our hiring page for 4 different levels of software engineer.
In the case where someone applies for a position that doesn't fit, we let them know and move them over to a different position in our applicant tracking system.
>A 2 year junior dev may be able to accomplish the same goal as the 12 year one, but much slower due to lack of experience, and you don't know if you'll find either until you start interviewing.
I have never worked somewhere where they would give both these people the same title. If the more experienced dev can do the job so much better that you're willing to pay them 50% more, they aren't doing the same job. Why would you give them the same title. I don't know anyone with 12 years experience (that would be worth 50% more) who would be willing to work somewhere with a junior title.
>If John Carmack and a junior dev both apply to the role of "Software Engineer", I see zero reason why a company shouldn't be allowed to offer him a substantially higher comp due to his experience.
Who is saying the company can't post 1 job title and a gigantic salary range. Of course they can. I'm just saying that it's stupid.
If you hire John Carmack and John Bootcamp grad, they aren't doing the same job, so what's the point of pretending like they are by giving them the same title. At that point you might as well just have one title for every position in the company. Just call everyone "Employee" and have a salary range of $1-$5,000,000.
>He'll likely accomplish the same goals more quickly, more efficiently, with better code practices in mind.
If he's producing so much more/better work that he's worth huge multiples more, then he's not doing the same job. There's no reason to pretend that he is.
>Having to put it under the guise of "a different position" is just befuddling to the process. It's the kind of unnecessary legislation that pushes companies to find shady ways of solving problems.
None of these laws say a company can't post 1 job with a huge salary range. It's just stupid to do so because it sets the wrong expectations for everyone involved.
> Tidal datums must be updated at least every 20-25 years due to global sea level rise. Some stations are more frequently updated due to high relative sea level trends.
I mean, I feel like that's fairly obvious, and the playful pedantry of my comment in a discussion on the very definition of basic unit of measurement was overlooked.
If we are going so far as to rigidly include "sea level" in the definition of "a second", it would probably help if we say that that we mean mean sea level.
Go one step further and respond with "One million dollars...mmmm"
Asking someone what they made at a previous employer seems like a cheap way to try and pay someone as little as possible. A fun snarky response feels justified.
Best case, they laugh and offer you a fair salary. Other best case, you move on to interview at a better company.
It's absolutely not optimal, it's inefficient. Many companies have learned this, which is why you see things like "Unlimited Vacations! Free snacks! Company provided lunches!" etc, offered as perks.
For low-skill labor, there isn't much benefit in making employees lives overly comfortable, but it is worth it to invest in some basic amenities - easy access to clean restrooms, regular breaks, clean air, clean water, warmth. These are the basics.
In the case of these workers:
- Better dorms = good sleep/less sickness
- Decent food (without worms...) = less sickness/healthier employees
- Decent toilets = less sickness/reduced stress
All of these => happier, more energetic, and less distracted employees => more efficient work => more work gets done.
With the benefit of making your company look like a good place to work.
You assume they have to keep those workers here. Foxconn can just get new people when the old ones break. It isn't optimal on a country level, but for the company it is optimal. Which is why we make laws to prevent companies from abusing workers like this.
There would probably need to be a case study to see if overworking, booting, and hiring new workers is more cost effective than investing in better work conditions.
My money is on better work conditions being a better investment long term. It'd reduce turnover. Less time hiring/training new employees, and the employees you keep are happier, stick around longer, and become more efficient at their job through experience.
> My money is on better work conditions being a better investment long term. It'd reduce turnover. Less time hiring/training new employees, and the employees you keep are happier, stick around longer, and become more efficient at their job through experience.
You might have noticed that most companies don't care about these things, because it doesn't matter much for them. For software engineers or equivalent, sure it matters a lot, but for unskilled workers that needs minimal training? Then it doesn't matter much, as even today we see that basically no company cares about their minimum wage workers conditions.
> You might have noticed that most companies don't care about these things
I've noticed the opposite. Even when I worked retail jobs (minimum wage) in high-school and college, those employers considered morale the be an important aspect of a productive work environment.
We'd have company BBQs, random pizza days, birthday recognition (sometimes with cake), etc. They gave us the proper tools to do our jobs, including gloves/box cutters/shirts/etc. Typically if you told a manger you needed something (work related), they would get it for you. Things chugged along fairly well.
Reducing turnover was an active goal because it cost them time and money to hire and retrain new people, even for basic tasks.
Not sure how "read history" is a contribution to a discussion about the cost-effectiveness of abusing workers vs investing in better work conditions.
A history lesson on "we used to do things this way, but then we made a law that says we can't anymore" isn't an analysis. It just tells me that people got fed up with being overworked and lobbied for a law against it. Not that their employers were making informed decisions.
It's akin to the broken "butts-in-seats" culture that has been slowly dying. Many employers are realizing that more hours at a desk isn't always a net gain in the long term.
Perhaps study the history of the 10 hours laws in England like 100 years ago? Documented points where the factory knew of the dangers and did nothing, fought to do nothing, cause the worker was replaceable. And nearly endless supply of Irish to literally work themselves to death. It's depressing.
I have zero sympathy for Capital when they have to sacrifice Profit for Ethical/Moral treatment of Labour.
The problem is that Apple can require that, their sub-contractors can agree and then just pocket the additional cash for it and not do it. Apple must more closely verify the conditions of its Indian subcontractors just like they had to do in China a decade ago.
Definitely a problem. Bad-faith actors can screw up well intended policies making everyone look bad. Inspectors that verify the work-site conditions help, but can also potentially operate in bad faith. It's a hard problem to "solve", but still likely worth it for a company like Apple, both in regards to PR and ROI.
The title oddly enough is "Apple faces its 'Nike moment' over working conditions in Chinese factories" from 2012.
One challenge here is that the host government (local, provincial, or national) is often complicit and might not agree to allowing such inspections. In that case, you simply have to be ready to walk away.
Such a strange situation, where a company has to walk away from letting people work for them because they can't verify their working conditions are good enough. I suppose these are the tricky side-effects of being an international corporation though.
> Many companies have learned this, which is why you see things like "Unlimited Vacations! Free snacks! Company provided lunches!" etc, offered as perks.
In countries like India, the supply of daily wage workers is almost limitless and companies don't have to care much about their retention as they can easily be replaced. What you're asking may be the efficient way of doing things for businesses in countries where there is a labour shortage and workers have more options than the employers.
> It's absolutely not optimal, it's inefficient. Many companies have learned this, which is why you see things like "Unlimited Vacations! Free snacks! Company provided lunches!" etc, offered as perks.
You are very (very) wrong and need to read some history. I strongly suggest an economics primer like Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers[1]. It's the second-best selling economics book in history and well worth the price of admission.
Saying I'm "very very" wrong and need to read history/some book isn't a good counter argument. It is the opposite, and a lazy retort at best.
If I am wrong, I'm sure your history lessons should be able to provide good examples how I am incorrect, and I would be happy to hear if that's the case, but I can't see just saying "you're wrong, read history" as productive conversation.
> I can't see just saying "you're wrong, read history" as productive conversation
You're denying a very foundational economic fact which, as a society, we litigated over a century ago, so giving you a resource (I can cite chapter numbers if you'd like me to) seems appropriate. Capitalist forces will always tend towards optimality and working people to the bone (including children) is optimal. This is why we need to have governmental forces preempt this by making these kinds of things (e.g. child labor) illegal.
This isn't really a dig against capitalism, it's simply how the system works by design. In other words, you're denying the precise thing that corporations optimize for: worker productivity and shareholder value.
Perks are a hack to continue to overwork your employees. Feed them and they don't have to leave to get food. Give them yoga and they won't have to leave for yoga class. Give unlimited vacation and they'll think they can take a break whenever they want, so they won't take one.
General inefficiency in their company is completely fine as long as they continue to increase revenue, as revenue growth is the only "efficiency" that matters in capitalism.
Occasionally I add social media sites (including HN) to the block list.
It's very easy to bypass when I really want/need to, but it does cut down the more unconscious "CMD + T - news/redd/face - enter" moments that happen when I'm bored.
Prevents the occasional unnecessary mindless scroll by creating a couple extra steps.