Author Topic: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,  (Read 16138 times)

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Offline james_s

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #50 on: November 19, 2018, 05:05:51 pm »
Meh, if not that we could be spending our waking hours searching for food and running from predators while hoping to survive to breeding age and find a mate like most animal species. I'd much rather work in an office than that. I do the work I'm told to do and get a paycheck in exchange. That allows me to do the things I really want to do.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #51 on: November 19, 2018, 05:55:02 pm »
Meh, if not that we could be spending our waking hours searching for food and running from predators while hoping to survive to breeding age and find a mate like most animal species. I'd much rather work in an office than that. I do the work I'm told to do and get a paycheck in exchange. That allows me to do the things I really want to do.
Physiological needs and safety are number one and two in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, belonging, esteem and self-actualisation are number three through five. Just settling for the first two levels is both setting an incredibly low standard and setting yourself up for an unhappy life.

Sometimes you have to sacrifice higher levels to satisfy lower ones, but forfeiting them from the get-go seems silly and entirely unnecessary. Happy employment is very attainable, especially if you don't prioritise financial gain over everything else.
 

Offline schmitt trigger

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #52 on: November 19, 2018, 06:05:06 pm »
Rstoffer;
please do not mis-understand me. I am all for, shareholders deserve their rewards. I am not a closet socialist.

My criticism is the corporate short term vision, the desperate and atrocious decisions, and the accounting shenanigans they make, in order to meet quarterly promises.
 
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Offline floobydust

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #53 on: November 19, 2018, 06:27:02 pm »
Corporate values have changed drastically over the years and pretty much killed EE as an enjoyable profession.

Old corporation: Building a good, high quality product is priority #1. We will grow our technology and skills.
New corporation: Maximize returns to shareholders, immediate profit is priority #1. Greed is good, greed is legal.

Whereas it's great fun to be a maker and build hobby projects, I find doing electronics engineering for corporations is just the opposite.

Since engineering is the bottleneck to rolling out new products, great pressure is on engineers as they are in the way of profit.
There is also the added burden of designing for global regulatory and safety approvals, none of which is taught in university.

My number is: 10 engineering jobs under 16 different bosses and 14 different executive/CEO's.
 
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Online coppercone2

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #54 on: November 19, 2018, 09:19:21 pm »
Meh, if not that we could be spending our waking hours searching for food and running from predators while hoping to survive to breeding age and find a mate like most animal species. I'd much rather work in an office than that. I do the work I'm told to do and get a paycheck in exchange. That allows me to do the things I really want to do.
Physiological needs and safety are number one and two in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, belonging, esteem and self-actualisation are number three through five. Just settling for the first two levels is both setting an incredibly low standard and setting yourself up for an unhappy life.

Sometimes you have to sacrifice higher levels to satisfy lower ones, but forfeiting them from the get-go seems silly and entirely unnecessary. Happy employment is very attainable, especially if you don't prioritise financial gain over everything else.

if you only set yourself up for the first two you will contract whats called 'mental illness'.

Some people actually prefer living at a scarcity of the first two and having the other three fulfilled (i.e. woodsmen, self sustaining isolated farmers, etc). Pretty sure they would die if someone made em change it.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2018, 09:21:49 pm by coppercone2 »
 

Offline cdev

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #55 on: November 19, 2018, 09:24:47 pm »
This is a global problem that is happening to people in all professions.

It originated in part with Frederick Winslow Taylor who advocated 'deskilling', as part of his 'scientific management' program.. basically the turning of skilled tradespeople and their work into commodified standardized parts, inputs and outputs in a machine.

Another of the mental models I find works well for the current situation is that we're seeing a sort of cult of competition. Its now become okay to set everybody everywhere against one another in a race to the bottom. Except nobody wins this race and everybody loses.


Physiological needs and safety are number one and two in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, belonging, esteem and self-actualisation are number three through five. Just settling for the first two levels is both setting an incredibly low standard and setting yourself up for an unhappy life.

Sometimes you have to sacrifice higher levels to satisfy lower ones, but forfeiting them from the get-go seems silly and entirely unnecessary. Happy employment is very attainable, especially if you don't prioritise financial gain over everything else.

if you only set yourself up for the first two you will contract whats called 'mental illness'.

Some people actually prefer living at a scarcity of the first two and having the other three fulfilled (i.e. woodsmen, self sustaining isolated farmers, etc). Pretty sure they would die if someone made em change it.

Until fairly recently people could make that choice in places like America and Western Europe and many other places, and live a happy life without being bothered. There was a sort of social contract which was unwritten but which was generally kept.  that all changed however over the past few decades, based on a set of theories about the nature of promises versus 'efficiency'.

A body of theory which has a lot of problems with it.

 This change went largely unnoticed but it had the effect of creating a body of new international law (so its gone without being noticed at the country level, yet it controls what countries can do) that basically says "whatever makes the most money is right" - even if every kind of promise that was made to people is broken.  Its being relied upon to bring about a large scale extraction of value from resources and people of every kind. Its not going to sit back and live and let live, its on the offensive to lock down everything in the most 'efficient' way. That means that farmers everywhere are being evicted from land they have farmed for generations, it means that poor people who have legal title to their lands can be displaced simply because 'X makes more money'. And this is happening against a backdrop of changes that should be helping the world achieve a better work life balance, so its having the effect of creating a race to the bottom where everybody must work more and more for less and less. 

Quote
"Law and Economics. The law and economics movement applies economic theory and method to the practice of law. ... The general theory is that law is best viewed as a social tool that promotes economic efficiency, that economic analysis and efficiency as an ideal can guide legal practice."

Its a cult, it seems to me, a cult of efficiency. it's advocates' unquestioning acceptance of its agenda has all the characteristics of a cult. It has a body of tenets which are I think logically wrong - which are going totally unquestioned. I have a feeling the word is heading into a major disaster because of these changes which are being made.

A big reason for these changes, their advocates claim is that the advent of "highly mobile global capital" has made it so businesses have to get high returns on investment "or the money will go elsewhere".  Countries are using this as an excuse to gut social programs and transfer value of every kind to corporations.

For example, in health care. The rest of the world's healthcare establishments are being pushed to act like really really horrible US HMOs, that deliver really low quality medical care, and this set of facts is being hidden from them.

One wouldn't think that the definitions of what test results indicated whether somebody has a treatable condition, would change, but that is exactly what they are doing.

Basically they are rigging the system to prevent care for people who have treatable illnesses and also make it so sick people, because they make a lot of medical mistakes, have no record of their health issues. These HMOs are extremely well connected. But their profit-oriented model of healthcare delivery is totally wrong. And doctors hate it. Because they are being asked to deceive patients. (They are not allowed to discuss important health issues with patients-things that the patient may need treatment for, without the HMOs blessing)

These HMOs also are exerting pressure on lawmakers to make laws that continually push the medicolegal standards of care, which vary quite a bit by geographical area, down.  You can imagine what this does to good doctors. People are paying for care, but they arent getting it. The HMOs are forcing them to attenuate their care to a sort of triage or disaster medicine where they only get the minimum and its an impossible situation. One where its understood that in this kind of environment, a lot of mistakes will inevitably be made. 

Doctors absolutely hate it. 

Its also the creation of artificial scarcity, in order to enhance profits.


I have two friends who I have known for decades, they used to be a couple, but now they are both married to other people. They are both doctors and - in private- they have a lot to say about these firms. They advise their friends to give them a wide berth.

Some of these HMOs make it a practice of destroying information. They intentionally deliver really low quality care for poor people. This is represented as a successful business model.

Now these kinds of practices are being pushed by lots of firms. Basically, the system is broken. But nobody is courageous enough to say it.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2018, 10:06:12 pm by cdev »
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Offline julianhigginson

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #56 on: November 19, 2018, 10:31:12 pm »

8) The Chinese discover the design for your widget when they review the PCB files. They then make half a million of them and sell them on Alibaba at 20% of the cost of your device.

As someone who has had a design i did photocopied by a Chinese manufacturer, that kind of situation lives in the past... The 90s were twenty years ago now.

Nobody in China wants or needs western engineers' IP any more.

They'll design it themselves if they want to make their own version of something. And lately, lots of Chinese manufacturers are totally doing their own thing. Why compete with cut price copies when your can make something unique and better?
 

Offline coppice

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #57 on: November 19, 2018, 10:36:44 pm »

8) The Chinese discover the design for your widget when they review the PCB files. They then make half a million of them and sell them on Alibaba at 20% of the cost of your device.

As someone who has had a design i did photocopied by a Chinese manufacturer, that kind of situation lives in the past... The 90s were twenty years ago now.

Nobody in China wants or needs western engineers' IP any more.

They'll design it themselves if they want to make their own version of something. And lately, lots of Chinese manufacturers are totally doing their own thing. Why compete with cut price copies when your can make something unique and better?
These days most Chinese designers do what most western designers do. They look at every competitor's model they can lay their hands on, critique them, and try to build something better than any of them.
 


Offline james_s

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #59 on: November 20, 2018, 01:18:33 am »
Rstoffer;
please do not mis-understand me. I am all for, shareholders deserve their rewards. I am not a closet socialist.

My criticism is the corporate short term vision, the desperate and atrocious decisions, and the accounting shenanigans they make, in order to meet quarterly promises.

This is the same gripe I have. Companies have become so short sighted. All focus is on the quarterly gains, we're seeing an epidemic of execs running a company into the ground and bailing out with a golden parachute only to do it all over again in some cases. As a shareholder I'd much rather see slow but steady with dividends than rapid growth that turns the stock market into a game of hot potato where the goal is to sell at the right moment to leave someone else holding the bag. Infinite growth is not possible, a system based on a need for that is destined to fail.
 
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Online coppercone2

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #60 on: November 20, 2018, 01:31:19 am »
 

Offline cdev

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #61 on: November 21, 2018, 03:43:34 am »
Often companies buy other companies to split off and sell their valuable assets and dumping their liabilities in somebody elses lap.

Buying low and selling high is the essence of capitalism.  Financial shenanigans with other peoples money is the purest form of capitalism.  The people who practice it know this, but others don't.

Almost all Americans, even self-described conservatives, always, when asked to describe capitalism describe something completely different.

Something which at best is in serious danger, it is under tremendous pressure, and almost doesn't exist any more. Not because thats what we want, its because the top has been taken over by crooks. Everywhere. Because they know their model is not working and they are in a state of panic. And making really bad decisions, as sort of a way of mounting a preemptive strike.


Rstoffer;
please do not mis-understand me. I am all for, shareholders deserve their rewards. I am not a closet socialist.

My criticism is the corporate short term vision, the desperate and atrocious decisions, and the accounting shenanigans they make, in order to meet quarterly promises.

This is the same gripe I have. Companies have become so short sighted. All focus is on the quarterly gains, we're seeing an epidemic of execs running a company into the ground and bailing out with a golden parachute only to do it all over again in some cases. As a shareholder I'd much rather see slow but steady with dividends than rapid growth that turns the stock market into a game of hot potato where the goal is to sell at the right moment to leave someone else holding the bag. Infinite growth is not possible, a system based on a need for that is destined to fail.

I am totally in agreement with you two guys. In my opinion, lack of a moral compass and compulsive greed and dishonesty is a plague on our society. The people who are doing these things need to be called out for what they are, or they will bring the whole world to ruin.

This addiction to growth at any cost is a cover up of the fact that growth as they want it is unsustainable, a Ponzi scheme.

Instead of their race to the bottom (thats what it is, a race to the bottom where wages will eventually approach zero, a situation that nobody in their right mind would view as a positive outcome, but thats what they are working for, seriously, and I can prove it to you in fifteen minutes of quality time) Instead what we need and want, what everybody wants, what we all grew up wanting is something where life is satisfying, where the people in the poor countries gradually pull themselves up, a model which is not based on 'shock therapy' and disruption so much as cooperation. Competition but not via dirty tricks. And new knowledge should be used to raise the quality of life for everybody as much as is possible.

What they fear is really at its essence, a race to the top.

Its what we all thought we were getting but they have hijacked the train, they have all formed an alliance to jettison democracy, because its directly in conflict with capitalism as they see it. And they are actually right because thats what at its core its always been. The period we grew up in was a historical anomaly of labor scarcity.

You don't have to take my word for it, the World Economic Forum (the Davos crowd) will explain it to you on their web site, under (Trilemma)
« Last Edit: November 21, 2018, 04:07:47 am by cdev »
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Offline Rick Law

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #62 on: November 21, 2018, 04:08:18 am »
I also would make the distinction between private-held and public-held companies.

Public-held companies are all about stock price....an Economics professor of mine actually theorizes that whatever companies do, whether is selling burgers, making cars or transporting people with an airplane, this product or service is only the means to an end.

And the end is the stock price.

Stock price plummets? The CEO and some board member's will get sacked. Not before inflicting lots of pain on their underlings.

Allow me to make a refinement to that.

Besides public vs non-public, another distinction is "for profit" vs "non-profit".  This will high light why you are there from the employer's perspective.

If you work for say the government (non-profit driven), you are there just to do a task.  It may serve you, it may serve your boss to justify his existence, or it may serve no purpose at all.  You are just filling a pigeon hole.  If you like it, great, if not, find another hole to fit in.

If you work for say "Cure Cancer Now" (I made this non-profit organization up for discussion), may be they do want to cure cancer, may be the founder just wanted a hobby, who knows.  But taking them at face value, profit surely should not be an issue.  At this point, it would just be like working for the government - with the added benefit of feeling having done something good for the world.  May be.  May be not.  If it does, "doing something good for the world" should be worth something to you.  If not, it is just a job.

If you work for Microsoft (or sub in any major for profit firm), they pay you and expect you to be a tool for them to use to make a profit.  Whatever role you may play: marketing, development, sales, accounting...  You have to add to the top line or the bottom line or both.  Otherwise, you are not useful to the company.

In all three cases, their mission statement should say why they are there.  You are there to help them complete their mission.  But, as life would have it, many managers have no idea what the employer's mission is, and your manager might just be one of those - so you would be there wondering why the heck am I doing this...

In all case, what you think or want really doesn't matter.  You have something to offer.  You just make sure what they offer for what you have is a good trade for you.  The golden rule again: "the one with the gold makes the rule."  The more you add to their gold pile, the more gold dusk you should get...

« Last Edit: November 21, 2018, 04:09:49 am by Rick Law »
 

Online nctnico

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #63 on: November 21, 2018, 11:25:31 am »
Rstoffer;
please do not mis-understand me. I am all for, shareholders deserve their rewards. I am not a closet socialist.

My criticism is the corporate short term vision, the desperate and atrocious decisions, and the accounting shenanigans they make, in order to meet quarterly promises.
This is the same gripe I have. Companies have become so short sighted. All focus is on the quarterly gains, we're seeing an epidemic of execs running a company into the ground and bailing out with a golden parachute only to do it all over again in some cases. As a shareholder I'd much rather see slow but steady with dividends than rapid growth that turns the stock market into a game of hot potato where the goal is to sell at the right moment to leave someone else holding the bag. Infinite growth is not possible, a system based on a need for that is destined to fail.

I am totally in agreement with you two guys. In my opinion, lack of a moral compass and compulsive greed and dishonesty is a plague on our society. The people who are doing these things need to be called out for what they are, or they will bring the whole world to ruin.
Big companies have the moral understanding of a 4 year old kid. This documentary makes that painfully obvious:

There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #64 on: November 21, 2018, 12:50:17 pm »
Big companies have the moral understanding of a 4 year old kid.
Big companies have the moral understanding that the environment they are in forces upon them. Its a game, like most other aspects of life, and people play to the limits of what the rules make possible. To be clear I mean the actual rules, not the theoretical ones. "That's illegal, but nobody has ever gone to jail for it" is not rule in practice.

Research since the 60s has shown over and over that people can do terrible things when they can shift the blame to someone above them, leaving them "just following orders". These days that someone has become the company itself, and even at the highest level of the company no individual has to take responsibility. Everyone acts on the basis that they must do what benefits the company. The snag is that the bizarre legal precedent of corporate personhood has never resulted in a company being jailed or executed for murder.
 
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Offline cdev

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #65 on: November 21, 2018, 04:32:47 pm »
This is a good explanation of "Groupthink" which is a form of institutional self-deception which I think is happening on a large scale.

https://www.afirstlook.com/docs/groupthink.pdf

If its not tempered with some sanity, and deep self-examination as to where we really want to go with all this, I think it will lead us into a global disaster. Soon.

If you look at Irving Janis's warning signs that groupthink may be going on, they are all there.

The PDF mentions the Challenger disaster and subsequent investigation. Richard Feynman also wrote a book about that investigation, and the chapter of it that is relevant to this discussion is on the web somewhere. Worth digging a bit for.

Its totally relevant to the practice of engineering and also for many other reasons, really quite worth reading.
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline Rick Law

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #66 on: November 21, 2018, 08:19:51 pm »
Big companies have the moral understanding of a 4 year old kid.
Big companies have the moral understanding that the environment they are in forces upon them. Its a game, like most other aspects of life, and people play to the limits of what the rules make possible. To be clear I mean the actual rules, not the theoretical ones. "That's illegal, but nobody has ever gone to jail for it" is not rule in practice.

Research since the 60s has shown over and over that people can do terrible things when they can shift the blame to someone above them, leaving them "just following orders". These days that someone has become the company itself, and even at the highest level of the company no individual has to take responsibility. Everyone acts on the basis that they must do what benefits the company. The snag is that the bizarre legal precedent of corporate personhood has never resulted in a company being jailed or executed for murder.

Companies/Corporations are no more and no less moral than the people who run them.  But one must draw a clear distinction between immoral vs illegal.

I see your UK flag, so I am not sure if the legal situation is the same.  In the USA, it is not unusual that officers of the corporation are held liable for the misdeeds of their corporation - after all, that is part of being officer of the corporation.  Some even serve time in prison for illegal misdeeds.

A good case study is probably Enron.  The company went kaput for its misdeeds - more than just Enron itself went totally kaput out of existence.  Some Enron officers served time in jail.  Even accounting firms that just checked (audited) numbers that Enron handed them were hurt too.  The once prestigious accounting firm Arthur Andersen went kaput with Enron.  Some Merrill Lynch execs finished serving jail time already when the Appellate Court and then the Supreme Court overturned some or all of the significant charges1.  So they were "over punished" if there is such a term.

Arthur Andersen's demise shows the difficulty in punishing companies.  Perhaps some knows the number they were getting were fake numbers, perhaps.  It is also possible that no one at Arthur Andersen knew the numbers were fake - after all, their role was to check the math and not a role to investigate the truthfulness of the source numbers.  May be they should have been more suspicious when the numbers looks too good, may be.  Fair or not, Arthur Andersen went kaput.  When it went kaput, every employee from VP to receptionist to janitor all paid for the crime, if any.

Footnote:
[1]  The Applet Court thew out the fraud part.  The Supreme Court might have overturned ALL remaining charges - after all, there was no fraud to obstruct so Obstruction of Justice charge is defunct.  But I am not sure of what else might have remain without doing deeper research.  So I will leave it as the Supreme Court threw out the "some or all of the significant charges".
 

Offline coppice

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #67 on: November 21, 2018, 08:54:11 pm »
A good case study is probably Enron.  The company went kaput for its misdeeds - more than just Enron itself went totally kaput out of existence.  Some Enron officers served time in jail.  Even accounting firms that just checked (audited) numbers that Enron handed them were hurt too.  The once prestigious accounting firm Arthur Andersen went kaput with Enron.  Some Merrill Lynch execs finished serving jail time already when the Appellate Court and then the Supreme Court overturned some or all of the significant charges1.  So they were "over punished" if there is such a term.
Enron was in the 90s. The world has changed. After 2008 nobody from Wall St served jail time for what happened.

From the middle of the 19th century, when company law first got really serious, both Britain and America jailed quite a few people for various types of misdeed. Even in the 1980s, when AT&T was broken up, several people have told me of speeches from senior people, to massed assemblies of employees, saying the court edicts would be complied with fully, because they were in danger of going to jail if only lip service were paid. You don't see that kind of worry among bosses any more.

I'm not sure, but weren't the only jailings of Enron people for the personal frauds they committed to swell their own bank balances?
 

Offline cdev

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #68 on: November 21, 2018, 09:12:20 pm »

The CEO of Enron died before serving a day of jail time,  a death certificate with his name on it was signed by his doctor.
« Last Edit: November 21, 2018, 09:17:15 pm by cdev »
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Offline Rick Law

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #69 on: November 21, 2018, 10:06:14 pm »
A good case study is probably Enron.  The company went kaput for its misdeeds - more than just Enron itself went totally kaput out of existence.  Some Enron officers served time in jail.  Even accounting firms that just checked (audited) numbers that Enron handed them were hurt too.  The once prestigious accounting firm Arthur Andersen went kaput with Enron.  Some Merrill Lynch execs finished serving jail time already when the Appellate Court and then the Supreme Court overturned some or all of the significant charges1.  So they were "over punished" if there is such a term.
Enron was in the 90s. The world has changed. After 2008 nobody from Wall St served jail time for what happened.

From the middle of the 19th century, when company law first got really serious, both Britain and America jailed quite a few people for various types of misdeed. Even in the 1980s, when AT&T was broken up, several people have told me of speeches from senior people, to massed assemblies of employees, saying the court edicts would be complied with fully, because they were in danger of going to jail if only lip service were paid. You don't see that kind of worry among bosses any more.

I'm not sure, but weren't the only jailings of Enron people for the personal frauds they committed to swell their own bank balances?

I think money is one of the main reason crimes are committed.  The other one is passion.

As to 2008 collapse...  In earlier reply, I drew the distinction between immoral vs illegal.  For the 2008 collapse, there was nothing illegal.  It was bad judgement and bad timing on the part of investment banks.  That balloon (house prices) was going to burst some point in time.  When government bank sells it at X, you know it is eventually going to be worth X/10. But you know for tomorrow it would be worth (X+1%) so it is a money maker...  Except this time you run out of tomorrows...  Bad timing.

Think about Sony Ericsson Phones, once one of the giants.  Big Executive made a big decision (Just In Time inventory), except it failed1...  Now it is a mere (and small) shadow of itself.  It too was a mistake that could have been foreseen - but wasn't.  Many, including a friend of mine, were hurt because of such mistake.  Life is imperfect.  Life has risks.  Not all risks are caused by execs being immoral or illegal, it could have been just a storm as in Ericsson's case.

Executives make mistakes.  We (average tech employee) on a day to day basis make smaller decisions.  Executives makes decisions that could take the company down - presumably, that is why they make the big bucks to make the bigger decisions.

That said, culture of a company one works for is important.

It should be no surprise to anyone here that many consider Google to be "left leaning".  Agree or not, for discussion purpose, let's assume that for now.
- What does that mean?
- What does that impact the companies' long term viability?
- How would that impact the work environment?
- How would that limit your personal viability there?
- How will that impact your getting the next job else where?
- How would that limit your future worth?

All those questions I raised above are valid questions but few would thinks about those issues at a job interview or during a job hunt.  Those issues are important.  Push come to shove, you take the job while not forgetting those land mines in front of you.

EE/Technology has its unique "land mines" no doubt, but a career in another field would not avoid all land mines, you just traded one set for another.  Hey, Monty Python thinks being a "Charter Accountant" is boring, but think about the excitement it would have been for an Enron accountant!  Oh, and those little land mines that could put you in jail...

The grass always look greener on the other lawn.  EE career may well be something to avoid, that is not for me to say.  What is important is always remember the longest runway still ends.  Look ahead as you enjoy your cheese - someone may move it.  Career in EE, technology, anything-else; always be on the lookout for "Who Moved My Cheese"2Doesn't matter what field your are in, but always know where you are at, check if the floor under your seat is rotting, and be aware of the land mines ahead of you.  And, always remember... you don't live to work; you work to live.


Footnotes:
1.  "When the chain breaks - Being too lean and mean is a dangerous thing"  The Economist, June 2006 article.
IT BEGAN on a stormy evening in New Mexico in March 2000 when a bolt of lightning hit a power line. The temporary loss of electricity knocked out the cooling fans in a furnace at a Philips semiconductor plant in Albuquerque. ... ... ...
Full article here:
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2006/06/15/when-the-chain-breaks

2. Who Moved My Cheese, Dr. Spencer Johnson.
Just quote Amazon here: "A timeless business classic, Who Moved My Cheese? uses a simple parable to reveal profound truths about dealing with change so that you can enjoy less stress and more success in your work and in your life."
« Last Edit: November 21, 2018, 10:11:19 pm by Rick Law »
 

Offline glue_ru

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #70 on: November 21, 2018, 10:41:44 pm »
There are many high paying jobs in the printing industry, repairing them.  Some of these printers are 8+ million $$ and run 24/7.
Training, travel, vehicles all paid for.  With a bit of overtime, 6 figures is not so hard to hit in ohio.
Sure, a fixed, exotic salary may sound better and higher, until you start working 70-80 hour weeks for the same pay as a 40 hr week.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #71 on: November 21, 2018, 11:17:48 pm »

The CEO of Enron died before serving a day of jail time,  a death certificate with his name on it was signed by his doctor.


That sounds like the best possible outcome frankly. It costs a lot of money to keep somebody in jail, and if they die, it accomplishes the same goal of protecting society from them.
 

Offline Rick Law

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #72 on: November 21, 2018, 11:27:26 pm »

The CEO of Enron died before serving a day of jail time,  a death certificate with his name on it was signed by his doctor.


That sounds like the best possible outcome frankly. It costs a lot of money to keep somebody in jail, and if they die, it accomplishes the same goal of protecting society from them.

I agree.  It costs a lot to keep them in jail.  At least their CFO and his wife (assistant Treasurer) did serve.  The judge actually allow them to serve one after the other so their child has at least one parent this side of the prison walls.
 

Offline cdev

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #73 on: November 22, 2018, 01:03:57 am »
The problem is, these scams are coming at regular intervals and they keep getting bigger. The taxpayers end up getting soaked for trillions.

These scams are literally trading away our futures, because deregulation now is getting locked in, because of WTO law, it cant be reversed. We set that up and we did it to frustrate democracy.

These scams are a very sophisticated form of fraud on the people of the whole world by a tiny group of very wealthy people. They are thefts and they are 'inside jobs'.

A good case study is probably Enron.  The company went kaput for its misdeeds - more than just Enron itself went totally kaput out of existence.  Some Enron officers served time in jail.  Even accounting firms that just checked (audited) numbers that Enron handed them were hurt too.  The once prestigious accounting firm Arthur Andersen went kaput with Enron.  Some Merrill Lynch execs finished serving jail time already when the Appellate Court and then the Supreme Court overturned some or all of the significant charges1.  So they were "over punished" if there is such a term.
Enron was in the 90s. The world has changed. After 2008 nobody from Wall St served jail time for what happened.

From the middle of the 19th century, when company law first got really serious, both Britain and America jailed quite a few people for various types of misdeed. Even in the 1980s, when AT&T was broken up, several people have told me of speeches from senior people, to massed assemblies of employees, saying the court edicts would be complied with fully, because they were in danger of going to jail if only lip service were paid. You don't see that kind of worry among bosses any more.

I'm not sure, but weren't the only jailings of Enron people for the personal frauds they committed to swell their own bank balances?

I think money is one of the main reason crimes are committed.  The other one is passion.

As to 2008 collapse...  In earlier reply, I drew the distinction between immoral vs illegal.  For the 2008 collapse, there was nothing illegal.  It was bad judgement and bad timing on the part of investment banks.  That balloon (house prices) was going to burst some point in time.  When government bank sells it at X, you know it is eventually going to be worth X/10. But you know for tomorrow it would be worth (X+1%) so it is a money maker...  Except this time you run out of tomorrows...  Bad timing.

Think about Sony Ericsson Phones, once one of the giants.  Big Executive made a big decision (Just In Time inventory), except it failed1...  Now it is a mere (and small) shadow of itself.  It too was a mistake that could have been foreseen - but wasn't.  Many, including a friend of mine, were hurt because of such mistake.  Life is imperfect.  Life has risks.  Not all risks are caused by execs being immoral or illegal, it could have been just a storm as in Ericsson's case.

Executives make mistakes.  We (average tech employee) on a day to day basis make smaller decisions.  Executives makes decisions that could take the company down - presumably, that is why they make the big bucks to make the bigger decisions.

That said, culture of a company one works for is important.

It should be no surprise to anyone here that many consider Google to be "left leaning". 

Nope, far from it. The workforce is not the management.
Nothing could be further from the truth.


Agree or not, for discussion purpose, let's assume that for now.
- What does that mean?
- What does that impact the companies' long term viability?
- How would that impact the work environment?
- How would that limit your personal viability there?
- How will that impact your getting the next job else where?
- How would that limit your future worth?

All those questions I raised above are valid questions but few would thinks about those issues at a job interview or during a job hunt.  Those issues are important.  Push come to shove, you take the job while not forgetting those land mines in front of you.

EE/Technology has its unique "land mines" no doubt, but a career in another field would not avoid all land mines, you just traded one set for another.  Hey, Monty Python thinks being a "Charter Accountant" is boring, but think about the excitement it would have been for an Enron accountant!  Oh, and those little land mines that could put you in jail...

The grass always look greener on the other lawn.  EE career may well be something to avoid, that is not for me to say.  What is important is always remember the longest runway still ends.  Look ahead as you enjoy your cheese - someone may move it.  Career in EE, technology, anything-else; always be on the lookout for "Who Moved My Cheese"2Doesn't matter what field your are in, but always know where you are at, check if the floor under your seat is rotting, and be aware of the land mines ahead of you.  And, always remember... you don't live to work; you work to live.


Footnotes:
1.  "When the chain breaks - Being too lean and mean is a dangerous thing"  The Economist, June 2006 article.
IT BEGAN on a stormy evening in New Mexico in March 2000 when a bolt of lightning hit a power line. The temporary loss of electricity knocked out the cooling fans in a furnace at a Philips semiconductor plant in Albuquerque. ... ... ...
Full article here:
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2006/06/15/when-the-chain-breaks

2. Who Moved My Cheese, Dr. Spencer Johnson.
Just quote Amazon here: "A timeless business classic, Who Moved My Cheese? uses a simple parable to reveal profound truths about dealing with change so that you can enjoy less stress and more success in your work and in your life."

What caused the 2008 crash? The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, allowing the US taxpayer to be soaked by the failure of these huge companies that deliberately pumped up their books with "nina" (no income, no assets) loans for properties whose valuations were set unrealistically, insanely high.

Loan companies deliberately wrote as many loans as they could - loans to bad credit risks knowing that the changes which had been made would end up costing the taxpayers trillions of dollars. And now they want to do it again.

It was a scam, a scam perpetrated by crooks who had inside information that the government would make good on those fraudulent loans. When before the taxpayers had been protected.

Kind of like the S&L scandal here a few years earlier.

Why was the Glass-Steagall Act repealed?

You can find out the claimed reason at the top of the very last page of an obscure document filed in Geneva on February 26, 1998 as part of the annex to the US Schedule of Specific Commitments for the financial services Understanding, part of the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services.  You wont read about it in any newspaper.

https://docs.wto.org/dol2fe/Pages/FE_Search/FE_S_S006.aspx?Query=(@Symbol=%20gats/sc/*)%20and%20((%20@Title=%20united%20states%20)%20or%20(@CountryConcerned=%20united%20states))&Language=ENGLISH&Context=FomerScriptedSearch&languageUIChanged=true#
« Last Edit: November 22, 2018, 01:17:46 am by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Online coppercone2

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Re: Beginners, stay away from jobs in the electronic business,
« Reply #74 on: November 22, 2018, 01:10:49 am »
what rights are you talking about?
 


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