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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • The place was a toxic cesspool at the time. An investment group had purchased 7 different companies and forced merged them in the space of 3 years and went on a massive hiring spree. The company I started with was 350 people. The company I left was over 4,000 people

    It was an illegal layoff that I could taken them to court over. However the in-house lawyer knew what was going on and made them give me one hell of a severance package to stop me from suing them. I basically got everything I reasonably would have gotten if I sued.

    That ended up being the most profitable year of my life.

    My boss ended up CEO for a few years. It didn’t go well. They have 1/2 the number of employees now and 50% less market share.


  • I am on my 3rd layoff in 10 years.

    First one I had all sort of dirt on my boss who was kissing ass to climb the corporate ladder. I was a massive liability as I knew what a waste of space he was. They laid me off with some really week excuses and a years wage/benefits to keep me quiet.

    Second one we got a new CEO who decided to make massive changes to the company “to make it more profitable”. It hasn’t shown a profit since and the layoffs are a yearly tradition now.

    The last one was this past fall. Smaller company over-invested when times where good. Then the market turned around and they are in trouble. One of those small “family” businesses, me and 20 others got kicked out of the family.

    So as of now I have my own business. I am on track to make 100% more than I ever have before working for someone else.

    Just for shits and giggles I also have an interview tomorrow for a C-suite position in a tropical country. It’s too fucking cold here.



  • My son’s group in middle school hosted their own proxy overseas. They then pirated a whole bunch of educational videos that the teachers liked to use and made nice clean interface. The games pages had no direct links on the educational videos screens. They had to type in the the page directly in the URL.

    So the teachers all loved the site and gave the official “approved for all students” bypass on the districts Chromebooks. The kids had uninterrupted access to all their games.

    The kids were smart enough to keep the location of the games to students with a B or higher GPA. Most of the teachers turned a blind eye to them playing games when they did get caught. The games pages also had a home button that sent the students screens to a random educational video. I was truly impressed with their clever approach.

    The IT department either never caught on or enjoyed the games themselves because its still up and they are all in highschool now.



  • The_v@lemmy.worldtomemes@lemmy.worldUsed to consume not produce
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    3 days ago

    Get out more. This is entirely realistic in my experience.

    The worst one I ran into was early in my career. This was back during the XP days.

    The lady who who did the job before had a certificate e-mailed to her from a lab. She printed the certificate off then slipped two certificates front and back into a plastic sheath and put them into a 4" 3 ring binder.

    She then deleted the labs e-mail and electronic copy to save space in her mailbox.

    There were around 4,000 of these certificates every year for 5 years when I started. So around 20,000 pages. We had ONE physical copy of a legally required certificate.

    Around 15 shipments per year required her to find around 300-400 specific certificates She then had to pull them out of the plastic sheaths, make 3 physical copies and scan one PDF to load to the government agencies webpage.

    She would then delete the PDF, and laboriously refile the certificates back into the the plastic sheets.

    Oh the binders were also ordered in a way that nobody but her could find anything. It was about as close to random as you could get.

    The 15 shipments took around 50% of her time every year.

    I hired two temps and gave them a few very boring days. When we were done the certificates were all organized in a logical numerical order and in long-term secure storage. I had a folder on the server with 20,000 PDF files all with a unique name. It took me around 15 minutes to locate, print, and upload the required files for each shipment.



  • Large companies do not generally innovate. Their internal inertia prevents them from successfully creating new things. Also the larger a company gets, the more layers of brainless MBA parasites latch on to suck them dry.

    Large companies rely on purchasing innovation by buying up a never ending stream of smaller companies. They then take the ideas/products and launch them to a wider market.

    Steam has remained small by rejecting massive buyout offers. This has allowed them to remain innovative.


  • It started when the company I worked for had a policy against supplying dual sim phones. I have had my personal number for close to 20 years so I am not letting it up. So I carried two phones. At first I was annoyed but over time I got used to talking on one phone and using the other for notes and reference.

    Now that I am self employed having the two phones is a habit with how I work.


  • I hit the point in my professional life when I just stopped asking for time off.

    I started using phrases like “I will be out from July 15th to August 9.”, “I won’t be in that day.”, “Sorry that conflicts with my schedule.”.

    For a while I kept getting random calls for stuff while I was on vacation. That’s about the time I started carrying 2 phones. The work phone and laptop got left at home.






  • The_v@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzimagine
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    15 days ago

    Stop your bullshit.

    Not only are they fertile, it is standard protocol to purchase competitors hybrid F1 seed and produce F2 seed in most species (except corn). Eventually plant breeders create inbreds (self-pollinating for 6+ generation’s). These inbreds are the used to make new F1 hybrids. In Europe this is referred to as “plant breeders rights”.

    In corn they have to get a little bit more creative. Corn breeders have to keep distinct genetically distant breeding pools to maintain heterosis in their the resulting hybrids. They pull traits from a competitors hybrid utilizing backcross breeding into their breeding pools.



  • The_v@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzimagine
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    15 days ago

    Where the fuck do people come up with this shit?

    No the “vast majority” of crops are not infertile. They are hybrids. Farmers buy the seeds because of a genetic phenomenon called heterosis AKA hybrid vigor. It takes expertise and a shit ton of money to make hybrid seed. If growers could get the same performance from saving their own seeds only an absolute dumbfuck would buy seeds from a seed company.

    Now there are a few species that hybrids can only be made by taking advantage of mutants that have male sterility genes. The resulting hybrids are still fertile (produce viable female gametes) but need an outside source of pollen. Examples: onions, sunflowers and carrots.

    The only “sterile” seed sold is seedless watermelon aka triploid seed. Seedless watermelons are only sold because the market demands it thanks to a push by the USDA after being created in Japan pre-WW2. The margins on seedless watermelon seed are often 40-50% less than hybrid diploid seed. And don’t get me started on the research cost - 14-15 generations for a new female line versus 7-8 for seeded types.


  • The_v@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzimagine
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    15 days ago

    Not even close.

    Seedless watermelons are a triploid. These are hybrid between a tetraploid female and a diplod male. The plant has three copies of every chromosome and is unable to produce fertile gametes aka completely sterile.

    Fruit formation is triggered by fertile diploid pollen (planted in the field In a 4:1 ratio). The fruit then continues to grow without embryo formation in the fruit seeds (pips).


  • The_v@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzimagine
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    15 days ago

    Saving seed for the farms own use is expressly allowed under plant variety protection and patent laws in the U.S.

    This is why the seed companies created contracts that they require all growers to sign before being allowed to purchase GMO crops. The prohibition from saving seed is from the signed agreement not from the patent or PVP.

    Say if you got grain from the farmer for your bird feeder. Then if you happen to use the grain as seed to plant some for next year’s bird feeder — completely legal. You are not bound by the agreement between the farmer/seed company. Unless you try to sell the grain/seed to another person. Then you are in violation of the seed companies patent in the U.S.

    Remember that corn shows a severe amount of inbreeding depression. So the F2 plant will not produce as much as the farmers F1 did the year before.