jobs

Fake Steve Jobs is just a frigtard after all

Brad Stone of The New York Times just outed the Fake Steve Jobs and it's none other than open-source software lover (Not!) Daniel Lyons of Forbes. The Great Faker Himself has admitted it..

And now there's nothing left to read with childlike wonder. Especially the wonder of how anyone could write with such acerbic bite about people that Lyons will interact with each day.

20/20 hindsight points to Lyons, who has never had much in the way of praise for open source.… Read more

"A mystery solved"

The New York Times figured out who Fake Steve Jobs is (tip o' the antlers to Daring Fireball).

Just seven more to go!

PayScale, a job seeker's best friend

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Americans have always been forced to play guessing games about their market worth. Job seekers or those who suspect they're underpaid should visit PayScale.com.

The Seattle-based company operates a Web site where anyone can supply details about their compensation and the service will tell them how it stacks up against peers.

Employees have typically dug up info on pay scales by asking friends employed in the same field--an inexact and frustratingly limited amount of information. Who knows if Joe or Sue is telling the truth?

"This throws light on information that has always been … Read more

The vintage allure of Fake Steve Jobs

Like many of you, I have my own theory as to Fake Steve Jobs' real-life identity. But I'm not going to discuss it here. At this point, bloggers' rabid attempts to lay bare the face behind the anonymous writer have grown a bit tiresome, and for all we know, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs will turn out to be a corporate travail staffed by a team of six writers nabbed from The Office. But that's not to say that Fake Steve isn't newsworthy. The blog, I'm willing to argue, has more to say about the state of the media today than a thousand "purple cows," noisy disruptors, viral-buzz ecosystems, and whatever other business clich?s you'd like me to throw in your face.

More than a few people would agree that the blogger behind Fake Steve, underneath his exaggerated Jobsian obnoxiousness, ranks right up there with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as one of the most spot-on social critics we have. But because nobody knows who he is, he can get away with more: Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman is a " sociopathic nouveau riche lady-killer," Gawker Media founder Nick Denton is almost never mentioned without the epithet "macrocephalic," and his Valleywag successor Owen Thomas is constantly referred to as "Mr. Bigglesworth." Former vice president and current global warming figurehead Al Gore is depicted as emotionally fragile and tormented by marriage problems that lead him to frequently call up the faux Jobs and ask for a couch to crash on (which tends to infuriate Mrs. Jobs). Rockers turned social crusaders Bono and The Edge, according to Fake Steve, are prone to bar fights. ("Bono says it's an Irish thing," the satirist asserts flippantly.)… Read more

Humans 1, chimps 0 in walkathon

It's official. We rule over chimps.

Researchers at UC Davis conducted a study about primate locomotion. They tested humans on a treadmill as well as chimps that were trained to walk on two legs and to "knucklewalk." (I must pause here to shed a tear for memories of my departed Uncle Spiro.)

They found that humans consumed 75 percent less energy in going from point A to point B than chimps, which use all four limbs to walk. Hence, chalk one up for the two-legged crowd.

But even more interesting, they found that two of the five … Read more

Porsche holding open call for positions

Now this could be a great reality show. It's like a combination of American Idol and Top Gear.

Porsche announced that it's holding open calls for 100 jobs Friday at its training center in Zuffenhausen, Germany.

Women, especially, are being encouraged to apply. The company would like to increase the number of women working in its industrial departments, which currently stands at only 10 percent, according to Dieter Esser, Porsche's head of vocational training.

"Every day we witness that the women are in every way the equals of their male colleagues and are just as enthused … Read more

It's not over until the fat lady sings

The horned one was kind of wondering what ever happened to that whole Apple options thing since the SEC hadn't delivered its final word yet, causing apoplectic fits of hysteria in either the pro- or anti-Apple set.

Turns out it's just another fine job by your Department of Justice! Sleep easy, citizen!

Fortunately (or unfortunately), the SEC isn't waiting around for Elliot Mess to get its act together.

In some cases, the San Francisco [U.S. attorney's] office is moving so slowly that the Securities and Exchange Commission, which ordinarily files civil fraud cases in tandem … Read more

Fake Steve Jobs lashes out against 'invasions of privacy'

The writer of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs appeared to break character Wednesday in decrying "invasions of privacy" that have the anonymous author rattled.

Fake Steve Jobs, as he or she has come to be known, posted a two-paragraph rant saying he has been consulting with lawyers and computer security experts after discovering activity "that may or may not have crossed over the line of legality but definitely fall outside the boundaries of what most decent civilized human beings consider to be appropriate behavior."

Valleywag, the self-described "tech gossip rag" of Silicon Valley, … Read more

How Jobs dodged the stock option backdating bullet

In researching this post, I came across a number of recent reports on Henry Nicholas III, the once high-flying CEO and cofounder of Broadcom. The allegations of illicit sex, drugs, and rock and roll reminded me of the 60s ... or was it the 70s? Funny, I can't remember.

While the story was enthralling, I didn't understand what any of it had to do with a federal investigation into stock option backdating. Sure, Broadcom had to take a $2.2 billion charge to fix the accounting mess left by the company's former executives. But how does that relate to hiring prostitutes and drugging customers without their knowledge?

Said another way, do the feds really need to dig that deep to find enough rope to hang executives with? After all, stock option backdating is all the rage these days. You'd think they'd be up to their eyeballs in rope.

I count no fewer than 38 top executives at 19 high-tech companies that have bit the dust over this stuff. We're talking top executives at big-name companies like Apple, Altera, Broadcom, Brocade, Cirrus Logic, Comverse, KLA-Tencor, Maxim, McAfee, Rambus, Sanmina-SCI, Take Two, Trident, Verisign, and Vitesse. And we're just getting started.

That's serious fallout considering that options backdating is legit as long as the company reports it and accounts for it accurately. You see, if you backdate stock options to a date when the price of the stock was lower, then the options are "in-the-money" when granted. That means the company incurs an expense equal to the difference in the share price between the two dates.… Read more