Comment Roundup

Some things crept into the recent comments that I wanted to follow up on, but I didn't think any of them deserved a full post. So, I am hodgepodging.

* James had a good point about the Pay Per Post model. He wondered if your earnings dropped if you were too negative and your credibility dropped if you were too positive. The way I had planned to combat that was not to take offers that I couldn't speak to sincerely. But that may not be enough. After all, nobody sees me bypass an offer. Given this thought, I am now planning to do some work for them for free. If they ask for a positive tone write-up and I don't feel positively, I'll write a negative tone review and just not accept the offer. What do you think?

* The fruit fund raiser post brought up some interesting points on two topics. I had originally been complaining about the pervasiveness of unhealthful choices in our culture. But my suggestion opened the whole school/group fund raiser issue. I don't think many of us like these fund raisers. Parents don't like peddling overpriced crap for the pittance that comes back to the school. Friends and neighbors don't like being guilted into buying it. The alternative is just to beg for money, but that can be more awkward. So, what is the solution? How can we transform the fund raiser model into something that supports the local economy, gives the school an adequate return, and gives the donor a feeling of satisfaction with their donation?

* Steve wants me to recrunch the numbers with the current six game lead for the Red Sox. Consider it done. The Sox are 76-50 and the Yanks are 70-56. That puts the Sox slightly over 0.600. They have been fluctuating around that for some time. If they continue to play 0.600 ball for the rest of the season, they will go 22-14. If they only win half of their games, they will go 18-18. So, we are likely to finish with 94-98 wins. That means the Yanks need 95-99 total wins to beat us. Therefore, they have to win between 25 and 29 of their remaining 36 games. That translates to a low end winning percentage of 0.694 and a high end of 0.806!

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Beware of Math

Comparing job offers is often a challenge. No two job offers are equal, even if they have the same dollar value attached. They are further complicated by the fact that different people value different things. For example, would you accept a lower salary for more time off? What if the salary discount subtracted more than the weekly value of the extra time? This is further complicated when you add contracting offers into the mix. Screw apples and oranges. It’s more like trying to compare a tropical fruit cup with a New England fruit cup with another New England fruit cup that somebody picked all the grapes out of. When you are a contractor, you get an hourly rate. You get no paid time off, but you do get paid for every hour you work. You also get a bump if you go into overtime. That means that the way you compare things is going to vary depending on what assumptions you make.

Let’s look at an example. Let’s say you are comparing two jobs. One is a $30/hour contract and one is a $50k a year job. To get these into the same units, we need to annualize the hourly rate. How do we do that?

1. Multiply it out times 40 hours per week and 52 weeks per year.

30 dollars/hour * 40 hours/week * 52 weeks/year = $62,400 per year

Looks like a better job, no? This will tell you how much you would earn with no overtime and no time off. How realistic is that? Let’s take out the holidays since most companies will not let you work on holidays.

2. Same as 1, but subtract the holidays since you won’t earn anything for those. Let’s assume 10 holidays as that seems typical on average. That’s the equivalent of 2 weeks of business days.

30 dollars/hour * 40 hours/week * 50 weeks/year = $60,000 per year

Of course, you aren’t allowed to take vacation under that scheme. So, if you are looking to compare, should you take unpaid vacation and see where you come out?

3. Same as 2, but subtract out the vacation days you don’t get. More and more high tech companies are standardizing on 3 weeks to start. That brings us down to 47 weeks.

30 dollars/hour * 40 hours/week * 47 weeks/year = $56,400 per year

Starting to get close now, isn’t it? And what if you get sick? Can you take time off? And how will you pay for medicine and such?

4. Same as 3, but we are going to remove a week of sick time and a conservative $500 per month to cover the difference in having company health insurance and having to be self-insured.

30 dollars/hour * 40 hours/week * 46 weeks/year - $500/month * 12 months/year = $49,200 per year

Now, all of a sudden they are similar. If we start adding to the salary with things like bonuses, tuition reimbursement, flexible spending plans, etc, it starts to far outpace the contract position.

The problem is that whole analysis is biased toward normalizing for benefits. If your goal is to make as much money as possible and assume some risks for yourself, then you may want to calculate for averages and maximums and may make some assumptions for overtime. You could probably calculate an annualized income of $70k.
What does this all mean? It means you need to decide your priorities and goals before you start searching. And you should do the math yourself. Other people will give you their takes on the numbers. This is not out of a desire to mislead or be malicious. They are just doing the math from their perspective. Do your homework. Set up your assumptions. Then do your comparison. Just realize that it is a subjective comparison. There’s nothing wrong with being subjective when you are the subject. After all, you are the one who needs to live with the decision.

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Pourquoi détestons-nous les Français?

Ever since the Iraq war, the French have been the butt of many jokes here. There was the ill conceived substitution of Freedom for French in our cuisine as in Freedom Fries, Freedom Toast, and the ever popular Freedom Tickler. Then there are all of the surrender jokes. I’m not sure where those came from, exactly. Then, during the last Presidential election, they dropped the big one. John Kerry just looks French. The approval ratings for the war that started this whole rift with France are at an all time low, and nobody seems to want to reconcile. Members of the right are still convinced that France is going to be overrun by Muslim extremists and plan to laugh at them and say “I told you so!” when it happens. We seem to have forgotten all that the French have done for us. We’ve also forgotten that intelligent people can disagree, but that’s a topic for another post. Let’s look at what France has done for us.

 

They helped us win the Revolution. They gave us aid in arms, ammunition, funds, and troops. They sold us the Louisiana Purchase. Just think of all the red states that would not exist today without that land. On the centennial of the Declaration of Independence, they gave us the Statue of Liberty, one of our greatest symbols of freedom! So, they helped us win our freedom, sold us valuable land to continue our growth, and gave us one of the most renowned global symbols. But they wouldn’t participate in an ill-advised, elective war. I don’t think I got to the bottom of why we hate them, but I know why they hate us!

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Would you rather?

I’m stealing a concept from my friend James over at Aces Full. Every week he poses a conundrum of the sort “Would you rather: X or Y”. Sometimes it is a question of having something. Sometimes it is a question of doing something. I thought of one recently based on a personal situation and decided to throw it out to my viewers. I’ve modified it slightly from what actually happened to try to reflect a more objective mind set as opposed to my interpretation of events. Here goes.

Would you rather:

· Stand up for what you believe is right if doing so has even a small possibility of posing a major risk (financial, emotional, social) to you and your family.

· Allow a grave injustice to pass at a smaller personal cost, but a potentially larger cost to society

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