"particularly when, as in banking, their tangible skill-set is relatively low"
This is incredible. You're the third person I know from the financial industry who has admitted that they have no transferable skills. And I don't know too many people from the financial industry.
These are the captains of industry, dictating how billion dollar corporations that make real stuff should be run. Jesus Christ we're so fucked.
I don't get it. Why doesn't he continue in school and use their servers? Most of us can only dream of a situation where we can work on our ideas and have the school/government etc pay us for it.
When he has a product that he can sell and some customers lined up, he can form his own company, license the technology from the school (most Universities are Ok with this) and basically bootstrap.
Trust me its a lot more fun when VCs are NOT involved.
Does he need to buy more servers with the 500K? It really seems like he has the technology but not a product as yet.
My $0.01 (only because I'm after you :-) is for the OP to go after them in small claims court ASAP. Its not a very difficult process. I hope OP saved his bills etc.
I believe the statute of limitations is 4 years, in any case time is of the essence.
* Don't get too greedy.
* Do stuff because you like it and not for the money.
* Stay grounded.
I feel for Khalid, but he's got to pay for what he did. Crap happens in life and you gotta deal. A lot of the things written about him seem to point to a somewhat sociopathic personality. Maybe he could run a Wall street company when he gets out of jail.
I've written about my situation at my soon-to-be previous company earlier.
My situation obviously wasn't as critical as being an engineer for the Challenger. But immature managers did whatever they wanted: no lives were lost but people were laid off, money was wasted, opportunities were squandered etc. I've been spending the last few weeks wondering how as engineers we should deal with this.
Its frustrating that after so many years (decades!) managers still don't know how to deal with engineers.
Back in 2005, I was at SEA getting a boarding pass at one of the kiosks. The older gentleman next to me was having trouble getting his. He asked a passing airline rep what the problem was. Her response: "Sir your name is Mohammed, so you're on the no-fly list. Come with me."
I'll never forget the sight of that man shuffling behind the airline rep to wherever he went. Unreal.
I kind of disagree. When Obama became President, I was ecstatic: I know of no other society where an obvious minority was elected by a majority to the highest office in the land. Meritocracy is alive.
What I've noticed since then is that people are a lot "freer" with the most hideous comments, because hey racism is dead anyway. Not just on the Internet but in casual off-handed comments to me as well.
Paradoxically, Obama's election seems to have brought out the worst in our society in a way.
Are these mostly tech people? I've noticed that folks that are too close to technology can't step away to see the product.
EG in the early 90s a lot of folks couldn't see how using a Web browser was different from ftp since both transferred files over the network.
EDIT: I should be honest and admit I was one of them. I was technically accurate just like Winer is technically accurate that a mailing list is not that different from a Facebook group.
In my experience, some older folks (over 40) seem to have this weird self-negating issue where they seem to lose confidence in themselves. I've known some truly badass programmers, stuck in shitty positions but don't move because of their own fear. So I think when you say "older folks find it harder to get hired", it becomes a self perpetuating kind of mindset.
The reality is that industry is dying to find people that can get shit done, as Cletus said. It doesn't fucking matter what you look like, your age, whether you have testicles or an ovary or neither like Data from STTNG.
My last gig was with a giant software company. BigCo management announced that my product would be canned in mid-Jan, effective March 31. Within 2 weeks of their announcement I had 4 opportunities (not counting internal opportunities) of which I chose the best one, starting in 10 days.
I'm not doing anything special, but life is good :-)
Bull shit. Cletus is absolutely right. I'm a grumpy old Indian bastard in my mid-40s and I can find a job without breaking a sweat.
I'm sick and tired of these thinly-veiled-fascist stories that lay blame on Indians, Chinese, Arabs, Mexicans, Muslims, women, young people, martians etc, just because the dude that wrote the story is a big fat loser.
Learn new skills, keep networking, get with the program, learn to compete or deal with it. I'm no genius but my salary did not plateau at age 40.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/17/...