TL;DR: My advice to you is to get out fast. As more people leave, the further behind the company will get, and the more pressure and blame will be placed upon those who stay.
This is sounds suspiciously like my last employer (before I started my own business). I had started in November, and just a couple of days before Christmas, management announced all Christmas vacations were cancelled, and we were expected to be at work on Christmas Day. They relented after every single person under the CIO (including Jewish, Islamic, and Hindu faiths--hey, company paid vacations unify world religions!) said the company would have their resignations within minutes unless they reversed their decision. They did.
But within the next couple of months, they started having rounds of layoffs. First, senior management (including CIO). Then down the line. Unbeknownst to everyone, the owner had put the company up for sale, and the Christmas thing was to try to get people to quit in order to avoid unemployment tax hikes.
I don't. I've first hand experience with groups which have "clandestine" agendas, both in the private sector and in government. And I don't mean UFO agendas, but money and financial oriented agendas. So it's not a big leap for me to accept that they exist for UFOs, or what "they" want us to believe are UFOs.
You have to determine who your market is. Some potential clients may not be in your market--whether too small or too big--and you pass on them. If there's a demand from those market segments, someone will pick up on it.
I only do fixed bid projects (plus expenses). In my experience, clients want to know up front what they'll be paying (or a very tight range, with expenses). Hourly, they get nervous they'll end up with The Never-ending Project, it's impact on their budget, and start haggling over hourly rate vs project value.
That's incorrect about the Constitution. While it does not lay down specifics, it does give Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. Known as the Commerce Clause, it's Article I, Section 8, Clause 3: "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"
This isn't happening in only SF, or only in tech. It's happening all over, and across the spectrum of ideas.
Is the argument that social media is tearing apart our society correct? I think it goes deeper than that, and that it's tech in general. We've grown impatient with right-swipe, immediate communication (whether through texting or calling on a cell phone; remember when you had to find a phone, or wait until you got to home/work?), immediate gratification. No time or desire to think things through, just react.
The happiest time in the past 25 years was the first half of 2016, when I swore off almost all tech for 7 months, road tripped, and visited with people--strangers--and learned what made them tick. Guess what--not technology. And I was relaxed, happy, free.
Technology isn't the cause of a toxic society, but it definitely is a/the catalyst.
As my late dad and other old timers said a few years ago, the price of land is tied to the price of corn. Land values (both purchase and cash rent) have fallen the past year or two from their high, slowly but steadily. From a pure numbers standpoint, land prices are still high relative to corn prices, I'd say about 2x as high as some historical years at this corn price (plus historical inflation). I'd like to see it down around $5K/acre in my area.
But there are other factors in the cost too, and that is how much people are willing to pay for land. And guys are still willing to pay for it at this level, although not as many as before. There's still profitability, if you play your cards right. But that's a whole other analysis.
There has been some land in Iowa which has still sold for $9-10K/acre this year. Very good CSR. But it's definitely not the norm anymore. $7-8.5k/acre seems to be the range.
Wow! I wish I could have gotten that price for my corn last year.
You quoted the price for beans, not corn. Corn averaged 3.40 over the year (currently, around $3.05 cash, not CBOT). That means it was about $640/acre for income. And that's assuming 203 bushels for all farmland. 180 is a better rule of thumb.
Of course, when a bag of seed corn is selling for $275-300+...not to mention input costs of equipment, fuel, fertilizer, labor (including yours), land (purchase or rent), etc...
There will always be some farmland effectively for sale; but there will also be other farmland which will never be for sale, no matter what the cost. The latter are generally "homeplaces", which have been in the family for generations. Heritage, blood, sweat, and years of hard work bind you to the soil, the land. It's more than an emotional attachment--it's almost spiritual, almost core identity.
I'm going to address how to handle the employee who came to you in confidence.
You need to sit down with her--before you do anything--and inform her you need to do something and why. Tell her you understand she came to you in confidence, but this behavior can not be tolerated. She might be able to brush it off, but the next employee the biz dev person harasses might not be so understanding and file a sexual harassment lawsuit against the company.
And if it's discovered YOU knew of his behavior and did nothing.....
I'm guessing power constraints. More flash you have, more power you'll require. Even increasing power consumption deltas minimally may impact battery longevity between charges on mobile devices enough to make it unfeasible with current battery tech.
The question isn't how big the farms are. The question is how are those who are "using" Farmlogs, using FarmLogs. Are they active? Are they using just the basic functionality, or are they using more advanced features?
I'm still involved in farming, and the guys I know who are "using" it, just are using the basic functionality.
Unless they have partnerships, FarmLogs is going to have a difficult time competing with Deere, Case/IH, other equipment manufacturers who are developing their own built-in products with similar feature sets and deeper pockets. Not to mention the local cooperative monopolies, seed companies, etc who are also in the game.
1) People/teammates make all the difference in the world. You love working with your current team; you've enjoyed working with the Other Company's (OC) IT Director before. But will you like the OC's team you'll be working with? Will you be seen by them as capable, or as a buddy being brought in to shove "architecture" down their throats?
2) Vacation. This is a negotiation. Tell them you have three weeks now (and have proof) and tell them you want the match. That shouldn't be too difficult, but I've actually seen companies balk and walk away over this (Even as far as telling senior people with X weeks vacation they'll be treated like entry-level and start with none for the first six months, etc). Sure sign of bureaucracy, and being tied to processes.
3) WFH. Kind of unclear. I'm assuming you can WFH pretty regularly now, and with OC you'll lose a lot of that. Again, negotiate. If most of OC team is in another city, what difference does it make if you're in the office, or at home on the corporate VPN--like they are.
4) Commute. WFH could make a lot of difference here too. But adding 15 minutes each way is 30 minutes a day, 2.5 hours a week, 10 hours a month, 120 a year. What could you do with that spare time if you didn't have the commute? Not to mention costs in gas, mileage on tires and car, etc.
5) Boredom. You're bored in your current job, which is never a good thing. But are you relevant? Meaning, are you doing useful things, listened to, etc? If you jump over to OC, will you still be relevant? Or will remote team ignore you and do their own things? Irrelevance and boredom are never good apart, and torture together.
It's like the old real estate mantra goes: "It's all about location, location, location."
There will be some metros where no one cares; they're so short-handed and the tech market so hot, they won't care and will hire you. Other metros which are more sedate, with few companies and therefore over-saturated with techs and H1Bs will look at you and laugh.
I agree with this statement. I lived in the Twin Cities for a decade and worked for four (4) different companies--the last three of which recruited me away from my then-current position.
As another responder said, the Twin Cities is very tech centric. While there are quite a few enterprise jobs, there are plenty of opportunities across the corporate-size spectrum--from startups (a large startup community exists there) to global Fortune 50 companies.
Let's examine this law via the perspective of speed limits.
In the US, most interstate highway systems have a speed limit of 70 miles/hour (around 112-113 km/hour). If you go over 70 mph and run into a police officer having a bad day, you'll get a ticket.
Say you're on a particular stretch of interstate which is populated by officers with a reputation of consistently coming after drivers traveling even 1 mph over the limit (eg 71 mph).
So, to err on the side of caution, you limit your driving to between 65 and 69 mph.
You're driving along at 65-69 mph thinking all is well in the world, when the flashing lights appear behind you. You pull over, the officer comes up, and The Question comes out: "Is there a problem officer?"
The officer looks you over and asks "Do you know how fast you were going?"
You get a puzzled look on your face. "Well, I couldn't have been speeding. I know you guys are pretty strict about speeding around here, so I set the cruise control right at 67 mph."
"So you know that speeding around here will get you a ticket, and you intentionally kept your speed below the speed limit?"
"Yes sir."
"Well, I'll need you to step out of the car please."
"Um sure, but why?"
"We have an anti-evasion law around here which makes it illegal for you to knowingly and intentionally go below the speed limit in order to avoid the possibility of going over and getting a ticket. The penalty is 30 days in jail vs the $100 speeding ticket. Since you admitted to intentionally going under the speed limit, I'm placing you under arrest."
This is sounds suspiciously like my last employer (before I started my own business). I had started in November, and just a couple of days before Christmas, management announced all Christmas vacations were cancelled, and we were expected to be at work on Christmas Day. They relented after every single person under the CIO (including Jewish, Islamic, and Hindu faiths--hey, company paid vacations unify world religions!) said the company would have their resignations within minutes unless they reversed their decision. They did.
But within the next couple of months, they started having rounds of layoffs. First, senior management (including CIO). Then down the line. Unbeknownst to everyone, the owner had put the company up for sale, and the Christmas thing was to try to get people to quit in order to avoid unemployment tax hikes.