To All My Valued Employees,

There have been some rumblings around the office about the future of this company, and more specifically, your job. As you know, the economy has changed for the worse and presents many challenges. However, the good news is this: The economy doesn’t pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job however, is the changing political landscape in this country.

First, while it is easy to spew rhetoric that casts employers against employees, you have to understand that for every business owner there is a back story. This back story is often neglected and overshadowed by what you see and hear.

I started this company 28 years ago. At that time, I lived in a 300 square foot studio apartment for 3 years. My entire living apartment was converted into an office so I could put forth 100% effort into building a company, which by the way, would eventually employ you.

My diet consisted of Ramen Pride noodles because every dollar I spent went back into this company. I drove a rusty Toyota Corolla with a defective transmission. I didn’t have time to date. Often times, I stayed home on weekends, while my friends went out drinking and partying. I was married to my work.

Meanwhile, my friends got jobs. They worked 40 hours a week and made $50K a year and spent every dime they earned. They drove flashy cars and lived in expensive homes and wore fancy designer clothes. Instead of hitting Nordstrom’s for the latest hot fashion item, I was trolling through the discount store extracting any clothing item that didn’t look like it was birthed in the 70′s.

So, while you physically arrive at the office at 9am, mentally check in at about noon, and then leave at 5 pm, I don’t. ! There is no “off” button for me. When you leave the office, you are done and you have a weekend all to yourself. I unfortunately do not have the freedom.

I eat and breathe this company every minute of the day. There is no rest. There is no weekend. There is no happy hour. Every day this business is attached to my hip like a 1 year old special-needs child.

Now, the economy is falling apart and I, the guy that made all the right decisions and saved his money, have to bail-out all the people who didn’t. The people that overspent their paychecks suddenly feel entitled to the same luxuries that I earned and sacrificed a decade of my life for.

Unfortunately, the cost of running this business, and employing you, is starting to eclipse the threshold of marginal benefit and let me tell you why: I am being taxed to death and the government thinks I don’t pay enough. I have state taxes, Federal taxes, Property taxes, Sales and use taxes, Payroll taxes, Workers compensation taxes, and yes – Unemployment taxes.

Taxes on taxes. I have to hire a tax man to manage all these taxes and then guess what? I have to pay taxes for employing him.

Government mandates and regulations and all the accounting that goes with it, now occupy most of my time. On Oct 15th, I wrote a check to the US Treasury for $288,000 for quarterly taxes. You know what my “stimulus” check was? Zero. Nada. Zilch.

The question I have is this: Who is stimulating the economy? Me, the guy who has provided 14 people good paying jobs and serves over 2,200,000 people per year with a flourishing business? Or the federal government?

Here is what many of you don’t understand … TO STIMULATE THE ECONOMY YOU NEED TO STIMULATE WHAT RUNS THE ECONOMY. Had suddenly government mandated to me that I didn’t need to pay taxes, guess what? Instead of depositing that $288,000 into the Washington black-hole, I would have spent it, hired more employees, and generated substantial economic growth because I wanted to make even more money.

My employees would have enjoyed the wealth of that tax cut in the form of promotions and better salaries. But you can forget it now.

Business is at the heart of America and always has been. To restart it, you must stimulate it, not kill it. Suddenly, the power brokers in Washington believe the poor of America are the essential drivers of the American economic engine.

So where am I going with all this? It’s quite simple. If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, my reaction will be swift and simple. I fire you. I fire your co-workers. You can then plead with the government to pay for your mortgage, your SUV, and your child’s future. Frankly, it won’t be my problem.

I will close this company down, move to another country, and retire. You see, I’m done. I’m done with a country that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive. My motivation to work and to provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, will be my citizens! Hip?

So, if you lose your job, it won’t be at the hands of the economy; it will be at the hands of a political hurricane that swept through this country, and will have changed its landscape forever. If that happens, you can find me sitting on a beach, retired, and with no employees to worry about.

Signed,
Your boss

6403 S CONGRESS AND ACADEMY 1007 S CONGRESS AUSTIN TX
14121 MOPAC & SLAUGHTER 5000 W SLAUGHTER AUSTIN TX

Sucks, but those were shitty locations anyways.

And so, in celebration of that fact, and hopefully, so I can make some money off the spam I receive, while also letting everyone know what the latest stupid Press Release I got was, I’m unveiling:

Unsolicited PR

Yep. It’s stupid, but simple…

And hopefully I’ll continue to get PR spam from stupid PR companies that aren’t paying attention to how they got my damned email address…

Ugh…

Click for larger

Sucks for the site owners, and for me. This kind of thing is why I just don’t rely on any outside party, other than my hosting company, to host anything for my sites anymore… There’s nothing more frustrating than clicking a link in my RSS reader and getting an error…

A common rule of thumb I tell people is to target their performance goals in application design and coding so that their infrastructure (not including people) is ≤10% of an application’s revenue.

Does that mean if I’m spending 5% of revenues on application infrastructure, I’m way underspending, or making more money?

A Sales Manager position and an Account Manager or Coordinator position (if you’re looking in Austin, shoot us your resume … contact info on those job postings – or if you can find my email address on this site (it’s on here somewhere, but I don’t want to get more spam), email me.)

Anyways, I’m trying to fill this position. And someone just sent us their resume in Office 2007 format.

I don’t have Office 2007. In fact, I’d make a bet that most people don’t have Office 2007. I’m still using Office 2003 on Windows, and Office 2004 on my Mac. So, I try to open their resume (which looks weird with the .docx extension by the way) and Word prompts me to download and install some Office 2007 backwards compatibility stuff. So I hit Okay. And the installer makes me restart my computer.

“What the fuck?” I think to myself.

And I’m thinking about hiring this person? They just cost me 20 minutes of my day. Nope, next.

So, lesson to all of you that might be job-hunting. Save your resume in a format that’s really portable. Use an older Word format, or even better… save is as a Rich Text Format (.RTF) file. That’s totally cross platform compatible, and will open in just about any text-editor, or in Word, and it’ll still look good.

Don’t use Office 2007 to send out your resume… it won’t impress people, it’ll just waste their time. Impress them by sending it in RTF.

And BAAAAD Microsoft making me restart my computer to install a converter utility.

I have an older MacBook Pro right now, and this thing is awesome. It’s soooo much faster than my old G4 PowerBook that it’s rediculous. I mean sick fast.

I use it everyday at work, and on the road, and I even run Windows on it inside a virtualization application called Parallels. With that combination, I use Outlook to manage my work email, and my work documents, which, actually also live harmoniously on my Mac OS side of the machine, so that I can work natively when I want to.

Apple’s really doing a great job with hardware right now, so take a look, these latest machines are truly awesome, and are not only some of the best laptops Apple’s ever built, they’re quite frankly some of the best laptops ever made, in general.

If you’re a Dallas area advertiser looking for a great way to reach people in the DFW Metroplex, you should take a look at PegasusNews and TexasGigs.com. This promotion would be a great way to stay in front of a truly passionate audience for a long time.

Now that he’s doing it full-time, I’m super excited about reading his full-time posts… and I figured I should support his efforts.

I even bought a t-shirt.

Good luck John. And thanks.

Got $20? Go become a member. Got $30? Buy a t-shirt too. Support a good cause.