Delicious LiveJournal Links for 2-6-2010

[andrewducker]

• What is nostalgia good for?
  (tags: nostalgia life psychology happiness)
• What happens if you eat too many raw potatoes? Warning - surgery photos.
  (tags: photos surgery potato)
• Instead headache from swirly patterns.
  Oooooh, swirly
  (tags: pictures animation)
• Dude, where's my pavement?
  When pavement-narrowing meets stubborn phonebox placement...
  (tags: Edinburgh EpicFail transport)
• Facebook's "Gmail Killer" Project Titan unofficially unveiled
  (tags: facebook google gmail email)
• What pregnant women wonâ™t tell you. Ever.
  (tags: pregnancy psychology women sex funny)
• Why We Love Narcissists (At First)
  (tags: psychology behavior dynamic leadership social)
• An investment banker talks about his bonus
  (tags: banking bonus finance)

Comments

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Hmm how about we pay them less AND let them have sane working hours?

[andrewducker]

We'd never reach the situation we're in now with that kind of thinking!

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

You do know they aren't potatoes don't you?


Just checking...!

[andrewducker]

Condoms tied in knots at the end?

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

That's what I thought, and one burst one. I bet that was some trip...

[meihua.livejournal.com]

I don't understand the fuss about that banker's pay. I know tons of people who work about 1/3 of the hours (the usual 37.5) and earn about 1/3 of the amount. Yes, they're getting stupid amounts of money, yes, it's for stupid amounts of work. There are lots of problems with the situation, but an unqualified, "They're just getting paid too much" doesn't seem to be one of them.

[andrewducker]

I actually tend to agree. Pay them lots, take 40% back off them in tax, everyone wins!

It's the people and companies that avoid paying (nearly) all of their tax that annoy me.

[andrewducker]

Of course, when you're talking about people earning £500k, that's way more than three times my salary (and I'm well over the average).

[matgb]

Ah, but have you, personally, been responsible for over £1billion pounds of profit in one financial year?

If I knew I was making that much money for my company in profit, I'd want a bloody hefty salry.

And I recall (but can't link to) a study that showed fraud prevention was a pretty significant reason for the high pay, but the banks won't admit it for obvious reasons.

[andrewducker]

I find it hard to believe that most of the highly paid people are actually responsible for £1billion in profit - insofar as anyone they took in could have done the same job.

[call-waiting.livejournal.com]

Fundamentally, what they do is take someone else's capital, expose it to a calculated risk, and hope it comes back positive. I could make a billion or so given enough seed capital. The responsibility lies primarily with whoever put up the capital.

The amount of work involved in making the trades is (more or less) independent of the amount of capital, which is what determines the size of the profit (or loss)

[andrewducker]

But presumably the big amounts of capital are handed to people who have proved that they can manage the smaller amounts. Which is something.

Supposing that the profits they produce are more than you'd expect from, say, just leveraging things more and more - which is not what my last lot of reading led me to understand.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I was shocked at how awful a lot of the friends were in the pregnancy article-- I wonder if the description was literal (I've asked at the blog) and how many people have social lives like that.

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

Small correction, in addition to what's already been said. Those aren't surgery photos, they're autopsy photos.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

I think where I part company in the banking article is that people are largely angry about the failed banks paying bonuses rather than banks which have remained profitable and where he says people would just leave and that would be the end of the bank. Er ... no, people might leave and if they did they would be replaced by other people.

[andrewducker]

Yup, he seems to think that bankers are irreplacable.

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

One of the things that irritates me about the amount of noise around bonus culture is that there is often little distinction drawn between bankers, investment bankers & 'people who work for banks'.

I think many people would be surprised to know what e.g. a mortgage adviser or branch manager actually earns.

[andrewducker]

Yup, I have a couple of friends who work at RBS in areas which are nothing to do with investments. Some of those areas are even profitable!

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Contract Analyst programmers of 5 years experience make more than that financial analyst at the same banks for circa 40 hour weeks. (OK we get taxed to the overall tune of about 50%, and more experience over 5 doesn't get you paid any more highly, usually). Though presumably Mr Analyst intends to climb some sort of hierarchy into making a bit more. If I read it right, he is in the same jobrole/career path as the (in)famous CityBoy ... 'nuff said.

Feel free to hate us too. Or join us. There are any number of ex-cops, ex-soliders, ex-hairdressers etc. Some of them are even quite good :-).

[andrewducker]

Is that his salary (£50k) or salary + bonus (£100k)?

My problem with going contract is the mixture of uncertainty and being stuck with whatever comes up next. I actively enjoy my job at the moment, which is worth being on £35k+10% bonus (well, last year).