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Three kids argue, whose father is the fastes.
The first one says:
My father is the fastest, he can overtake the arrow that he shooted with the arch.
The second one:
My father is even faster, when he hunts, he can shoot an animal and run up to the animal before it fells down.
The third:
The two of you really don't understand what speed is. My father works for the government. He finishes work at 4:30 pm, and he's back home by 3:45 pm every day.
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/ravi
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Just plagiarized (The Wife does work for the government).
Veni, vidi, vici.
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CPallini wrote: Just plagiarized
Me too! Sent it to my high school class mailing list. 
/ravi
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CPallini wrote: The Wife does work for the government
So she is home early, lucky you 
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Espen Harlinn wrote: So she is home early, lucky you
Depends on for whom she is returning home early! 
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I'm at home early too. 
Veni, vidi, vici.
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Just plagiarized (The Wife does work for gets paid by the government).
FIFY
You cant outrun the world, but there is no harm in getting a head start
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
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Funny how that works isn't it?
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Quote: Funny how that works isn't it?
No pun intended right? 
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Of course not!
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Mike Hankey wrote: Of course not!
anyways, have a nice evening Mike ...
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Espen Harlinn wrote: the government.
overheard;
"Working at the speed of government to make all your dreams come true"
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Three kids were arguing about whose father was the coolest smoker.
"My dad can blow smoke out of his mouth and nose at the same time" said the first.
"That's nothing. My dad can blow smoke out of his nose and his ears" said the second.
"That's nothing," said the third. "My dad can blow smoke out of his butt."
After a few moments, one of the others asked, "How do you know he can do that? Did you see the smoke?"
"Not directly," said the third boy, "but I've seen the nicotine stains in his underwear."
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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Now, that puts the notion of a dirty joke in perspective
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The fourth, the italian one, would have answered:
That's nothing, my father works for the government too, but he finishes work at 4:00 pm and he's back home for noon, after being around for shopping
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In April, I will have been a professional developer for 26 years. I'm now working for my eleventh company as a paid employee (thus not counting all the contracts I've done.) Most the companies I worked for weren't very healthy and were having problems. Out of curiosity, I made a list of all the companies, whether I resigned or was laid off, whether they were profitable when I exited and if they are still around.
Not counting my current position (a company that has always been quite profitable and still is), here are the results:
Companies: 10
Resigned: 4**
Profitable upon exit: 3*
Still around: 4.5 (half for Novell which is a shadow of its former self.)
* One company has a massive debt, but runs solidly in the black otherwise, so I counted it as profitable. Another has since recovered, but was losing money when I was laid off. I was laid off from a third the day it was bought. It was profitable and is still around, but the new owners have driven into the ground.
** One of the companies which isn't around is one I started and ran in the late 90s. On tax returns it made a profit until the very end, but only because I often didn't pay myself. After the CDROM-based infotainment market collapsed in 1997/98, I used the company for contracting. I made several thousand on my last contract and officially shut the company down at the end of that month. Still, I didn't count it as profitable. And, while I voluntarily exited, any other choice wasn't practical.
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3 of my former employer companies are no more (including ICL)
1 of my own company ditto
3 are still in existence
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Companies 3
Resigned from 1
Made redundant from 1
Company taken over 1 (but its still around or I am working in the wrong place)
apart from the company I work for now, the first company is just still around and the second closed before it became financial issue
Every day, thousands of innocent plants are killed by vegetarians.
Help end the violence EAT BACON
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A full time employee at 11 companies in 26 years yields an average length of service of ~2.4 years. Wow!  Not to be rude but... why do you change jobs so often? Surely that comes up in interviews. 
In February 2014 I will have been at my current company for 28 years. There have been a few non-profitable years here and there but as a whole we are quite profitable.
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. ~ George Washington
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Mike Mullikin wrote: why do you change jobs so often?
Layoffs. Usually because the company was in fiscal free fall. Half of those weren't actually profitable when I was hired! Like I said, of the ten former companies, five don't exist anymore (they aren't shells of their former selves; they no longer exist at all.)
In one case, the company owners had a bitter divorce. The ex-wife stayed on as CFO, the ex-husband as CEO. One day they got especially pissed at each other and laid off everyone working for them but whom the other had hired. Several, including myself, got caught up in the mess.
The most common thread is that the companies which expanded the fastest, especially with over hiring, fell the hardest.
As for interviews, my experience is fairly common where I live and most people have heard of the companies in question. In one case, in every interview I was asked "what IS going on over there?" Almost everyone they were interviewing was from that company. (When I was laid off from there, the remaining employees were told that this layoff would stabilize the company and there was nothing to worry about. Four months later they had a massive layoff. A similar thing happened ten years ago during the dot com crash--the company had a layoff, said everything would be fine, and then a few months later declared chapter 7 bankruptcy.)
BTW, if you add up all my contracting, my length of service averages even less. But, that's averages.
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I guess (depending POV) I've been lucky. Over my 28 years here I've moved around a bit, traveled the world a bit and have been well compensated. I started in mechanical engineering, evolved into pure IT, then returned to engineering concentrating on machine controls and now managing the department.
I know some (most?) people would get bored staying at one company for so long but it works for me. This place must not be too bad because there are at least a dozen people here with longer tenures and we only employ ~300 worldwide.
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. ~ George Washington
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Mike Mullikin wrote: mechanical engineering
My experience is that companies that have a hardware component tend to be more stable than pure software companies. I tend to work for pure software companies, which come and go like dust in the wind.
Incidentally, the below comment isn't a joke; at most places I worked at, we wouldn't even consider someone who hadn't worked at multiple companies. This isn't out of spite, but because the work tends to resemble contract type work more than long term stable work.
I don't know if I could stay at one place 28 years, but I planned on staying at my last two companies more than seven and nine months respectively. The first of the two was an awesome company in all respects. Then the president died and they were bought by the biggest jerk company in the area (which is owned by one of the worse Private Equity firms out there.) Since then, almost everyone who wasn't laid off, has quit in disgust. My last company had the best product in their niche, but management were lying, vindictive, micromanaging, crazy bastards. Among many other things, they made the mistake of hiring based on future, hoped for gross sales, not actual earnings. They also tried to do too many things, leaving them vulnerable to startups concentrating on one sub-niche.
The only company I truly regret leaving was three companies ago. The commute was hell, they weren't giving me the raises promised and which I deserved and I was tired of arguing over several issues (ironically, I was totally vindicated months after I left.) Still, I really enjoyed the people I worked with, their product is kick ass and I had the best manager ever. If they matched my current salary, I'd probably go back.
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Joe Woodbury wrote: pure software companies, which come and go like dust in the wind.
I wonder if there is an inverse causation between employee turnover and company stability.
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. ~ George Washington
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Mike Mullikin wrote: I wonder if there is an inverse causation between employee turnover and company stability.
It's one giant feedback loop. Companies grow unstable, people bail; people bail, company grows unstable. (Company has layoff, thinking it will solve everything; it makes things worse, usually because they laid off the wrong people and the talented engineers start bailing and you get the feedback loop going.)
A big factor for software companies is that traditionally, they rarely gave raises and any bonuses were often in the form of stock options. Except for Novell, I've never worked at a company which gave me more than one raise and half didn't even bother. Until just a few years ago, it was openly stated in the software [only] industry that if you wanted a raise, you changed jobs.
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