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[Il Palazzo]

snip

Yeah, man. That's, like, generic S-F philosobabbling. It's not even that much removed from how most people think of them thar scientists in their ivory towers.
I thought you meant crazy as in Stephen King half way though a 1000-page book, when he knows the editors will have given up and won't harangue him about a gang-bang with 11 year olds or some such shit.

[Travis Bickle 2]

It sounds like the Jurassic Park book is pretty cool; maybe I'll read it.

You don't need to be in love to love and be loved

Perhaps not in the sense of brotherly love or Christian love.

Meh, love is terrible and makes people do terrible things.

The thing is that I'd rather be able to come to the conclusion myself that love isn't worth it than have to go off of second-hand reports.

Its not a good thing, but if you "actually" aren't going to find true love, a bunch of other people didn't either.

Part of the issue is realizing that it's not unlikely that I'll become—for lack of a better term—one of those people.

[ChairmanPoo]

Michael Crichton was kind of a crazy luddite. Jurassic Park succeeded more on the basis of "Dinosaurs are cool" than on Crichton's crazy underlying philosophy.

[Criptfeind]

The first quote has some sorta dumb stuff but doesn't seem too far out there, the next two quotes do seem pretty wacky though, the idea that science is outdated and dying because it can't tell you what to do is strange since science has never told you what to do. It seems like the speaker is putting out their own inaccurate ideas about what science is then being upset when science fails to live up to those ideas.

[King Zultan]

I thought you meant crazy as in Stephen King half way though a 1000-page book, when he knows the editors will have given up and won't harangue him about a gang-bang with 11 year olds or some such shit.

I still don't get why people let him get away with that pedophile shit, besides the fact that nobody wants to read a book that's a mile wide.

[Frumple]

I mean... it's the US. We've got one of those as a president right now. The culture's unfortunately more accepting of that kind of shit than it likes to admit, and that's not a new development

[wobbly]

Meh, love is terrible and makes people do terrible things.

The thing is that I'd rather be able to come to the conclusion myself that love isn't worth it than have to go off of second-hand reports.

I doubt you are a sad about it if you haven't been in love or some precursor if it (whether lust or another emotion).

Good luck anyway. I'm not in a relationship because relationships bring me stress rather than happiness, but this is different for many people.

I wouldn't wish my life on my worst enemy, but at the same time, not everyone finds love. And it's not actually the end of the world.

[Great Order]

Ugh, just one of those days where I'm bummed out.

Maybe it's the medication? I dunno.

[McTraveller]

Why do companies, when they say they want to reduce 2% of costs, lay off 2% of their employees instead of just giving people a 2% pay cut?

I happened to work for a company in the past that did the latter - as employees we all thought it would be better to support each other by all taking the pain, rather than really sticking it to a couple people and everyone else being "fine."

[nenjin]

It's an opportunity to let people go that you wanted to let go, too. I literally just had that conversation in my 1:1 today with my manager about a less-than-stellar employee under me. We missed projections from last year by a not insignificant margin and so we're starting to cut costs where we can. I've been on the fence about this employee for a year and the idea was brought up just to can him and we'd say save a significant chunk of change. But we need them because it's too busy for the staff we have, and if they were let go, we wouldn't rehire for the position for a while.

But yeah. Cost cutting and workforce reduction is a chance to get rid of employees you believe are over-valued. Reducing everyone's pay instead lowers everyone's morale further and you still have a less than optimal employee. Cost cutting measures gives you somewhat of a cover if they try to file a grievance over their termination as well.

Consider that, when you include a benefits package in someone's compensation (health insurance, HSA, 401k etc...) the cost to an employer is usually double what the employee's gross salary is. If you're paying someone $65k a year, they actually cost you $130k after it's all said and done. So reducing everyone's pay X% has to get pretty steep to cover the cost of letting go an entire employee.

I'm not saying it's great. But having gone from grunt, to middle management and maybe one day upper management, my view is broader than it used to be. For every mustache-twirling, greedy owner that is ready to sacrifice people for money, there are hundreds of owners out there trying to balance keeping a business going while treating their employees like people.

[McTraveller]

Yeah I mean I can understand trying to cut "underperformers" but it seems odd to couch that in terms of "cost savings."

Especially when it's only like 2%, which is well below normal attrition anyway. Just don't backfill? And if there really is a "negative performer" then take specific action.  I think it's the idea of the carte-blanche cuts that just seems strange.  Even stopping a project that isn't going anywhere doesn't seem as bad.

Aside: General total payroll (salary+benefits+taxes etc.) is about 50% more than salaries, not double - at least in the USA. At least in every company at which I've worked, anyway, which spans 4-person startups where everyone knows the bills to one of the largest companies in the world.

[Great Order]

Jitsu injury list:

Pulled person into guard, they blocked with their knee, it went flying full force into my taint which fucking sucked

Tried a throw, the "Bend knees" command was sent from my brain and failed to reach my knees (Seriously, am I dyspraxic or something?) so I basically did a twisting backwards deadlift. Lower back was very upset with that and I know I'm going to hurt tomorrow. As it is, ibuprofen and paracetamol is keeping me... alright. It seizes up occasionally.

[Frumple]

Why do companies, when they say they want to reduce 2% of costs, lay off 2% of their employees instead of just giving people a 2% pay cut?

I happened to work for a company in the past that did the latter - as employees we all thought it would be better to support each other by all taking the pain, rather than really sticking it to a couple people and everyone else being "fine."

I'd... wager a fair amount of money a 2% pay cut would see you losing significantly more than 2% of your employees, for most businesses. Maybe not as immediately, but... yeah. Lot of folks response to wages dropping is "find a job that isn't doing that". Some businesses have the right sort of environment that won't happen, but I'm fairly sure it's pretty damn rare.

E: Honestly, screwing around with your employee roster just... kind of in general is how you fuck up? If there's specific problem issues, you deal with the specific problem, but general adjustments are, just. Your company is its people. Shit has a really hard time selling itself, even heavily automated services need some kind of employee roster to keep it functioning. You're rarely going to get genuine cost savings cutting payroll, because if payroll already isn't making more money than you're putting into it, you're probably fucking up somewhere else really hard and reducing the amount of people on hand to friggin' fix it isn't likely to, like. Help.

About the only time there's maybe an exception to that is when there's some major change outside your control (say some fuckwit puts 25% tariffs on steel or something, I'unno, maybe the last batch of administration did some really goddamn stupid things in terms of hiring, who knows) and you're not so much trying to find cost savings as trying to tourniquet a bleeding limb before the entire company goes under. At that point a 2% shift isn't going to save shit, though.

[Lord Shonus]

Yeah. You start cutting pay, there's a good chance everybody quits. Sometimes in a union shop you can sit down with the union, offer the option, and have the membership vote on it, but otherwise you're only going to get away with it in a small business where everybody trusts management implicitly. Such a situation is rare.

[martinuzz]

Over here, cutting someone's (hourly) wage is illegal, except in very strict circumstances where a company can prove they will go bankrupt otherwise, and can prove that cutting wages will prevent such bankrupcy. They would need to jump through burocratic hoops for a few months firsts to get permission for that as well.