One word. Farmville. (and other games like it)
-wraith808
I didn't know what this game was, so I asked Lily if she had ever played it. She did not know about it and said she had played
the Free Farm game.So, I googled and took a look at
Farmville and their "About" page. The game is produced by
Zynga.I see that from a post
here dated 2012-01-24:
But in the meantime, their [Zynga's] stock is skyrocketing nearly back up to the IPO price of $10 on rumors that they may be getting into the online gambling game.
That, of course, is the
real game - no, not poker, but corporate financial growth aimed at annual stock appreciation. This is the Holy Grail that seems to drive everything in the "civilized" Western Capitalist economies. And the religio-political ideologies that allow for Capitalism to flourish actually
work - to a greater extent. So that we are arguably all the better off for it. It allows for wealth creation.
So, let's look at Google from that perspective. There is an illustration
here that gives a nicely dumbed-down picture (they're called this BS term "infographics" nowadays) of where Google's
$37.9 billion dollars of revenue in 2011 came from (up from $32.2 billion in 2010).
If you knew what the accumulated direct and indirect expenses were that were incurred and recorded in the accounts of the company, then you could calculate the net profit. That net profit figure could be expressed as a percentage of the total income (revenue) of the company. Without looking at Google's published accounts, you won't be likely to find that number, but any such percentage of $38 billion is likely to represent a significant number in its own right.
A significant part of Google's expenses will be wages and salaries paid to employees. It thus could make very good financial sense for Google
if they were to minimise the cost of salaries through the use of cost-cutting salary deals - e.g., such as a "food-for-pay" deal that
rachelbythebay refers to.
And arguably nobody would care about the ilk of
rachelbythebay when their pay is lost in the numbers for the costs incurred to make that revenue of $38 billion.
So how many of that ilk might
feel as though they have been ripped off (and it
would be a matter of perception) by the company, as regards salaries and benefits?
Well, not a large proportion, it would seem, if we look at
Proletar.
For example, here is Proletar on Google:- and for comparison, here is Proletar on IBM:- and for comparison, here is Proletar on HP:Generally speaking, we could argue that the greater the employee population and the more that those people have been screwed about or pissed off by an employer, then the greater the number of employees that would be likely to make their thoughts known on Proletar - which could probably explain why HP have a relatively large number of employees making comments on Proletar. (Makes for interesting reading too.)
Interestingly, whereas HP seems to be perceived as a relatively abysmal employer, by comparison Google seems to be perceived as being middle-of-the-road (not too bad) as an employer, and IBM seems to be perceived as being quite a good employer - not too much discontent there, anyway. There are not enough respondents for Google or IBM to give useful statistical meaning though.
The above Proletar scores make sense in that:
IBM historically has always seemed to have been relatively well-managed and to have led the pack with innovative and fair terms of employment. Therefore you would probably be hard-pressed to find large numbers of genuinely pissed-off or disgruntled IBM employeee or ex-employees.
HP used to be pretty highly regarded too, and I recall that they used to pay in the upper quartile and have a stated HR policy objective of being perceived as:
"a preferred employer of choice" (or words to that effect)
- but that seems to have all changed by around 2003/2004, when they had apparently become progressively focused on maximising shareholder returns and engaging in acquisition (e.g., Digital, and later EDS) and asset-stripping and outsourcing (labour arbitrage) of jobs to third-world economies - e.g., places like the Philippines, Malaysia and India. At the same time they were apparently reducing benefits and laying off employees by the tens of thousands. In the resultant climate of fear and job insecurity HP then (more recently) even adopted a strategy of systematically coercing employees to accept reduced paypackets, with the implication (but not a promise) that this could bode well for their continued employment in these uncertain times.
So, by comparison, the ilk of
rachelbythebay might not be too badly off, though that doesn't necessarily mean that they
haven't been ripped off.
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