Tag: TED

Feb282013February 28, 2013August 1, 20137Commentsby Tony Hunt

No More Overtime?! Really?!

Posted in Randomosity...
tonytow tony hunt gets angsty

Some things just absolutely tick me off.

So today an interesting string of articles came up on my radar: an initiative to abolish overtime pay for hourly laborers. I know a lot of you are like “WHAAAT?!”

Initially, I was even like “OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!!!!”

Why? Because that money I like to have when I’ve been working for over 40 hours a week.

That was my initial line of thinking because as an individual, overtime pay has helped me through a lot of rough spots. It allowed me to avoid having to get a second job more often than not. But now that I am running my own company, I see immediately where the government (de)regulation here will remove an absolutely HUGE burden on many many employers here in the U.S. and allow a LOT of staffing opportunities to occur.

This type of legislation will definitely rock the boat, but not necessarily in a bad way. At first I was skeptical because of the impact it has on workers that rely on overtime. Then I realized that this only applied to employees who actually get to work over 40 hours a week (with a few exceptions). Those hit the worst on this type of legislation are union workers, whose inflated salaries are a HUGE drain on employers. Followed up by contractors used to gouging on time over 40. After that…well…it’s not actually that bad.

Here’s the kicker though. This potentially saves employers a TON of money. The reason companies dont like overtime in their service process is because it literally throws profitability in the shitter. Work-related accidents happen more often to employees working over 40 hours per week than those that dont. This affects disability, and workmans comp insurance. Immediate affects are seen in shared tax and compensation responsibilities. Essentially, businesses that dont have to pay overtime are far more likely to be able to employ their staff more, or allow for more staffers based on this (de)regulation.

Dont get me wrong, I love overtime, but to be honest it causes more pain to employers that it’s worth to the employees getting the extra pay, and allows companies to staff better.

Are there arenas where this may be a catalyst to working overworked people even more? Absolutely, but this tactic is already used and a TON of companies already dodge the overtime bullet by deliberately misrepresenting positions as exempt job types when they are nothing of the sort.

Anyhow, I am really curious if this is just another smokescreen platform to get us riled up while something else is pushed through or if it’s like SOPA/CISPA.

Article from the Daily KOS
Opposition Article from PoliticusUSA
HR 1119


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Jan262013January 26, 2013January 26, 20130Commentby Tony Hunt

Getting faked out by Google people who aren’t really Google.

Posted in Randomosity...
tonytown tony hunt gets angsty about google people that arent google

Some things just absolutely tick me off.

So this really cool-sounding woman calls me and when introducing herself implies that she is with Google. I manage a large number of Google Profiles so this doesn’t really surprise me that they are calling as I get a couple from them a month regarding ad campaigns n such.

But she was talking about a new feature program that would place MY company in the top position in local searches for web design and small business IT solutions. Of course I was getting all puffed up because I was being led to believe my online profile was giving me a nice rep.

As it happens, they went so far as to ask if I was going to be able to handle the new influx of business beforehand so that I wouldn’t lose the ratings I get from my clients online. Again…ego gets even more inflated because I’m set up to accommodate any amount of business very quickly and this kind of trend could net me crazy income in just a short time.

I manage to finally chime in, I am surprised to hear about this program from Google, wouldn’t this come under severe scrutiny? She says, “no it’s always been a part of the system, the business benefiting from it never advertise that their getting the service because that would defeat the purpose.”

No I am just mystified. I actually do SEO and SEM. I know how page-ranking and back-linking works and the formulas necessary to get a top-rated searchable profile on the net…it normally takes years unless you spend a SERIOUS amount of cash monthly in content building and linking. So of course I am like, “Please sign me up I am all about this.”

She tells me to hold on as she’s going to get me over to one of the techs to get some details on the profile.

A moment later a guy gets on the phone and he’s like, “Umm. Mr. Hunt it shows here your a web designer.” I answer, “Well I do a ton more than that but yes.” He then asks me if I do SEO, and I answer Yes to that. Then he asks me why I’m interested in paying his company to to do SEO for my own company.

There it was. These guys weren’t Google, they fast-talked with a good voice so confidently that I was led to assume that’s who they were.

These guys are going around selling leaving the impression with businesses that they are with Google and they aren’t. They’re just people offering to do SEO and SEM.

Ugh.

If you’re wondering which company it was, they are called Hot Spot SEM, you’ll see I wasn’t the only guy that was given the impression he was getting a call from Google directly. Normally I wouldn’t have posted such a rant publicly, but this was absolutely misrepresentation and the fact that I was given the impression they were Google tells me this was deliberate.

If you’re doing SEO or SEM the process always works, there is absolutely ZERO need to portray yourselves as Google. I see the intent in garnering more clients, but it’s a shit tactic…thus you get my post here on my blog.

http://m.mrnumber.com/1-949-268-1067 <-Notice I wasnt the only person that felt this way.


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Dec052012December 5, 2012December 6, 20121Commentby Tony Hunt

How the Mighty Are Falling-Is our IQ really falling?

Posted in Randomosity...

Seriously…are we getting dumber? Our kid’s IQ is worse?!

Just thought about something, our IQ’s and education…

The Roman Empire survived well over a thousand years by reinventing themselves as the center of civilization, and in it’s venerable years, the center of control for the Catholic Church, which in its later years was actually for more powerful than the empire itself. I mean we’re talking like 1700 years. that’s 3 times longer than almost every other government in history (that we have real documentation of). They were among the most educated people on the planet for their time. Many many great thinkers were a part of the empire and contributed to it’s success. The idea

Now the U.S., we’re just a little over 200 years in and barely cohesive. UK isn’t much further and isn’t much better off. I see countries that invested heavily in their education system may have lived a little poorer, but are now completely showing us up. What’s worse is I feel like we’re ignoring it. We have these half-assed programs that are supposed to have a huge impact on our educational system when we’re completely ignoring the fact that we haven’t been adequately educating for decades.

What does it take to get people to see the problem here?


The article above is saying that for the first time in our existence, the average IQ of next generation in the US will not be smarter than the previous generation. How the hell does that happen? Is our education system so poor or entrenched that we cant reverse this trend? How is it that people in charge of our education system didn’t see this coming?

TonyTown - Hold No Virtue - IQ - Education in Finland might be getting it rightThis scares me. I mean, what happens in 20 years when it’s our kids in charge? I mean personally I haven’t actually seen examples of this per se, but wow how does this pan out?

By the same token, I’ve been reading about the “Flynn Effect” where our IQ’s are showing an increase, but because the generation gap is statistically affected by relative age this notion is less severe than the media it portraying. The problem in this is that most of the statistics are showing that we are not keeping up with systems in play throughout the rest of the world. However this same idea would also depict our great grandparents as being mentally retarded by today’s standards of intellectualism. So is the beauty of the increase is in the eye of the beholder? Do we have to stay competitive with other nations or continue on our path to creating a huge division in our population intellectually?

On that note, I REALLY love what has been done in Finland. They have made education a positive part of their society rather than a problematic half successful tax on their population. I put some links below if you’re interested in reading them.

/rant over.

LINKS
Great Article on where we are educationally from the ETC blog.
Article about the Flynn Effect and details on this from Smithsonian.com
Why are Finland’s schools so successful?
Heavy Details on why Finland’s education system works so well.
Another article on differences in Finland’s Education System


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