I think this is a case of the employees acting out and not a corporate policy or corporate retaliating. Nevertheless, EasyJet will be taking most of the brunt of the bad PR
A very focus country on being the most successful country in SEA and it's built on the vision of one man, LKY. However I do fear the day LKY pass and the government is lost.
This actually works very well. I don't have an ipad yet, but I do the same thing with my iPhone. In addition to that I also have leechblock(found it in lifehacker) that blocks 3hrs block of time with breaks in between. 8-11, 1-4, 6:30-10:30 and midnight-4am. This way I can't "accidentally" browse HN or other news site during my supposedly productive hours. If I really need a fix, I just browse in my iPhone and away from my computer. It's easier to stop browsing on my iPhone than on my computer.
First off I would like to say that you are pitching to the wrong crowds. If I'm not mistaken, HN readers are mostly hands on coders. Meaning we are the programmer that you are talking about outsourcing. Part of the allure of this adventure in Y Combinator style entrepreneurship is the hands-on nature of building our own product. To build our baby, release it to the world and hopefully see it being loved by everyone. If I were to outsource the most interesting part of this adventure, the programming, why am I going this route then. I might as well get some money, contact some vendors in China and sell merchandise. Might not be a tech startup, but a startup nonetheless.
While your ideas are sound, the execution is going to be very different. Just look at the countless companies who outsourced their IT development and support to other countries and how many faced millions of dollars or losses and missing datelines by months if not years. Boeing is the most recent story that comes to mind. If you think Skype and Basecamp is all you need to managed a programmer, i think it's a little bit naive. From my personal experience, agile style code review and plenty of micro milestones are the most important and they are only the beginning.
Also in my humble opinion, unless you have no clue as to how to build your product, you should almost never ask your programmer to come up with the architecture. Most of the time your programmer is not looking at your vision from the same perspective as you are, thus this is where a deviation from the original design occurs. Good or bad deviation is up to the situation, but more importantly what's the long term impact of this deviation and is the new solution or path maintainable?
Every programmer code in their own style. What this essentially means, the next programmer who takes on maintaining your product will have little to no clue how or what the previous programmer did. Thus programmer usually hijack a process mid stream, do what needs to be done and feed the data back to the process. Imagine this process occurs over and over again and 5 yrs down the road, your code just became 5 times more bloated than it needs to be and it will soon be unmaintainable. Then a complete rewrite is needed which usually mean lots more money.
As you can see I've only highlighted a couple of issues, these points are just the tip of the iceberg. If you think programmer can be just another commodity product that you can buy and sell as needed in units, you are sorely mistaken. A good programmer is equal part art and skill. We are not the union workers stamping out car parts, we are the specialize welders and builders that you go to when you want to build a GT racer.
I would like to conclude by saying that I mean no disrespect to your idea and article, but I think there might be quite a few things that have not been considered or covered by your article. Also your idea is very similar to Tim Ferris's 4Hr Work Week.
I think all these explanation of fear of legal ramifications and how it's hard to provide feedback are just covers.
Employers and/or recruiters don't provide any reason because the the minimum that they have to do to let you know that you are not accepted is to tell you no. They are not bounded in any ways to do more than that. Telling you why means they have to think, to sit down and write more than a sentence. It's easier to just give a canned answer and send it out.
All the outer explanation of legal ramification, hard to provide feed back, it's just smoke screen to cover the most basic human nature to be lazy. Period.
Personally I've had good feedback 1 in every 50 application I sent. I've always proactively asked for feedback when I can and I think I've probably had 3 good feedbacks so far. One went as far as buying me lunch and explain the decision to me while another invited me back to his office where we sat down and chatted for quite a bit.
It's not that you suck, it's just human nature. Most of us are a lazy bunch.