The Official Status Thread
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I have no idea! I have literally never heard the phrase "pink slip parties" before in my life!
I think the term came into existence during the dotcom crisis of the turn of the century. It was a networking thing.
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And you've always had the same sort of pension plan? And workers have always had modern lifespans?
I work for a university, and the demographic timebomb isn't hitting them nearly so hard because their employees have been long-lived for quite a long time. They also didn't do nearly as much in the way of contribution shenanigans as many companies did (well, at least here in the UK) so there are a lot fewer chickens coming home to roost.
It helps a lot that we have one pension plan for all employees, from cleaners to vice chancellors.
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I'm not entirely clear what a 401K is
It's a specific type of US retirement plan; the details aren't relevant to the conversation except it's not what you traditionally mean when you use the word "pension."
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Current status: it's Tuesday. Way better than Monday, but still Tuesday:
bool isTestingMode = false; // MAKE SURE THIS IS FALSE WHEN NOT TESTING!!!!!!!!
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It's a specific type of US retirement plan; the details aren't relevant to the conversation except it's not what you traditionally mean when you use the word "pension."
It sounds a lot like a defined-contribution plan, based on the details posted upthread.
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Status: The project is finished. Ceased. End of. Long live the project!
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It sounds a lot like a defined-contribution plan, based on the details posted upthread.
It is a defined-contribution plan.
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except it's not what you traditionally mean when you use the word "pension."
"Pension Fund" (which will go towards purchasing an annuity/otherwise funding your retirement if/when both you and your fund reach it?)
?
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Current status: wondering why the anti-vaxxer and anti-GMO crowds choose emotion over science.
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"Pension Fund" (which will go towards purchasing an annuity/otherwise funding your retirement if/when both you and your fund reach it?)
The way I understand it, generally, in the US, "a pension" means a defined-benefit retirement plan. while 401ks, 403bs, and so on, are still retirement plans, the details are different, and they're called defined-contribution plans.
While they both are intended to provide income after retirement, they aren't exactly the same.
Or did I just whooosh?
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Status: sitting at home at 1:45 PM on a Tuesday, with Blakeycat in my lap, eating the shit out of some fast food tacos.
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eating the shit out of some fast food tacos.
Please tell us what fast-food chain so we can avoid buying tacos there...
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The way I understand it, generally, in the US, "a pension" means a defined-benefit retirement plan
It's all about control. A pension is a retirement plan where the company (or Union) you work for retains control of all retirement funds. When you retire, checks come directly from the company you worked for before retirement.
A 401k (and similar) are plans in which the retiree retains all control over their own contributions. The investment account is set up by the company, and typically the company also makes investment decisions (usually safe mutuals). The employee contributes to the account, and often the company offers "matching" contributions. When you leave the company, you retain control of the investment account and funds in it.
The problem with pensions are: 1) they were developed when it was assumed people worked at one company their entire life, and 2) if the company goes under, pension funds are at risk of disappearing. As the employees of the City of Detroit and Hostess are currently finding out the hard way.
401k's are both easier for the company to manage, and safer for both the company and employee. Traditional pensions are something of a dinosaur, leftover from a bygone age. They're especially rare in tech companies, as all tech companies other than IBM and Siemens were founded long after pensions were already out-of-favor.
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Oh man, I have beef taquitos in my freezer at home with my name on them...
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In the UK, 'pension' is a rather ambiguous term that can describe any one of:
- a current income stream from an annuity that is currently funded from/was purchased using
- a defined benefit scheme (DB) in which you pay over §Y/Z% of your salary to accrue 1/xth's of a year's final salary per year or
- a defined contribution scheme (DC) in which over the lifetime of your employment you sacrifice/give up part of your salary to go into a fund that is invested in shares/bonds/whatever, and when retirement comes you use whatever's in the pot to buy an annuity/go into drawdown.
"Pension" as a word, then, doesn't really mean much without context. (If you're talking about someone in retirement, it will usually be sense #1. If you're talking about someone still working and contributing to a fund of some sort it is highly likely to be sense #3, since those in sense #2 are as rare as hens teeth in the UK these days.)
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401k's are both easier for the company to manage, and safer for both the company and employee. Traditional pensions are something of a dinosaur, leftover from a bygone age. They're especially rare in tech companies, as all tech companies other than IBM and Siemens were founded long after pensions were already out-of-favor.
The rules in the UK are a bit different. All pensions are held at a rigidly-guarded arms-length from the company following some high profile cases where bosses stole very large amounts of money from the fund (especially the Maxwell affair). On the other hand, it is usually easier for an employee to transfer out of a defined-benefit plan, though a shitload of tax becomes immediately payable if it isn't to another pension product (which can be either defined-benefit or defined-contribution).
Many private-sector employers seem to like defined-contribution plans for their employees, probably related to how they took "pensions holidays" for a substantial part of the '80s and '90s and assumed that the stock market would let them continue to do so indefinitely. But the stock market isn't guaranteed to make your money increase; who would have guessed it…? </cynical>
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In my WTF-land, each employer is obligated to pay your medical and pension insurance, usually 30-40% over the paycheck you get. So you might think that money goes into some pension fund that you can draw out of after you retire.
NOPE.
It goes straight into the pensions being paid to retirees right now.
So where will your pension come from? Well in 30 years some other sucker will be paying into "their" pension insurance and you'll be getting that.
So what if there's an unemployment, or lifespan-- DONT THINK ABOUT IT THE SYSTEM WORKS LALALALALA
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It goes straight into the pensions being paid to retirees right now.
Ah. So you've replicated American Social Security.
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Ah. So you've replicated American Social Security.
Only with pocket change level money.
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those in sense #2 are as rare as hens teeth in the UK these days
All UK universities have a single DB scheme.
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Status: Completely bored at work, and agitated because of it.
I have no tasks assigned to do, so nothing to track time on, and a weekly quota of tracked hours that I'm supposed to hit (with exceptions should we take long lunches or my boss says to take extended breaks, but those are generally only on Fridays).
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Status: FILE_NOT_FOUND
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Current status: wondering why anyone thinking that clicking on a comment's time should provide a link to the comment.
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It goes straight into the pensions being paid to retirees right now.
This describes the current state of the UK state pension scheme. And I don't see it changing.
And given the ponzi nature of it, and future predictions, the current (and immediately preceding) government decided to up the age at which it becomes payable from (for men) 65 and (for women) 60 to, (for both) 66 in 2016, 67 from around 2034 (or 2026, they've not decided yet) and 68 in 2044 (currently). citation
I won't be getting mine until I'm 67. I plan to retire, however, when I'm 55, the earliest I can (currently - they're thinking of fucking with this as well, now) get my hands on my private (DC) pension fund.
All UK universities have a single DB scheme.
Public sector workers. Says it all. A substantial proportion of those schemes are running on the ponzi-type funding that the state pension is. Whether the university scheme is one I've no idea.
I'll clarify my previous post:
If you're talking about someone still working in the private sector and contributing to a fund of some sort it is highly likely to be sense #3, since those in sense #2 are as rare as hens teeth in the UK these days.) The opposite applies if you're talking about the public sector.
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This describes the current state of the UK state pension scheme. And I don't see it changing.
And given the ponzi nature of it, and future predictions, the current (and immediately preceding) government decided to up the age at which it becomes payable from (for men) 65 and (for women) 60 to, (for both) 66 in 2016, 67 from around 2034 (or 2026, they've not decided yet) and 68 in 2044 (currently). citation
I won't be getting mine until I'm 67. I plan to retire, however, when I'm 55, the earliest I can (currently - they're thinking of fucking with this as well, now) get my hands on my private (DC) pension fund.
Right.
New plan: die young.
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New plan: die young.
Oh, no. I've saved up for my retirement - I'll be spending it myself TYVM.
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Status: Wet, got caught in the rain on my motorcycle. My gear is about 99% waterproof. However the zipper on my jacket isn't, and I had a headwind, and so I was totally soaked on the front from water being forced through the zipper.
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Status: wondering when I'll next have a debugging meeting go double length due to one coworker failing to understand the accents of others ("theme" sounds like "team").
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Public sector workers.
Universities aren't public sector. They're massive charities (Really! Legal tax wheeze) and are definitely not public.
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Status: FILE_NOT_FOUND
That was actually my status for a point last week, when I was actually looking for a file that had, unfortunately, disappeared.
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So what if there's an unemployment, or lifespan-- DONT THINK ABOUT IT THE SYSTEM WORKS LALALALALA
Easy enough - increase the age of eligibility for pension payouts and reduce the amount paid out for the individual pensions.In Germany 20 years ago the aim was 67% of your averaged last take-home income, with the "normal" retirement age being 65 years.
By the time I will be in retirement age that age limit will be 67 years and the payout will be somewhere in the region of 43%.
Then again, the baby boomer generation will, at retirement age, form a substantial part of of the electorate. So substantial a part that they will have to be bought somehow... so we will see what really happens.
Interesting times ahead in two or three decades...
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Status: wondering what to do first - visit the job center, start work on the bathroom, clean my apartment, clean out the attic or have breakfast.
Perhaps I should create a todo list first.
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Status: wondering what to do first - visit the job center, start work on the bathroom, clean my apartment, clean out the attic or have breakfast.
Perhaps I should create a todo list first.
New unemployment hobby project: make a todo list app to help you decide what to do while unemployed.
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I think breakfast is a good thing to start with.
Eating something tasty can fill you with lots of energy and motivation for all the other things~
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STATUS: Listening the classical music top 100 today at work. Classical music is always a better idea in theory than in practice.
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Status: Wet, got caught in the rain on my motorcycle. My gear is about 99% waterproof. However the zipper on my jacket isn't, and I had a headwind, and so I was totally soaked on the front from water being forced through the zipper.
The wettest I ever got on my bike wasn't because of the rain per se, but riding under a bridge just as a huge load of water got dumped off the top. I literally had a puddle on my lap.
Not as bad as the time I was caught in a hail shower while going at 70 though
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Status: Cursing at Sharepoint (again)
Fuck SharePoint! Fuck Excel! Why don't you open my file?
So it gives me three suggestions:- Name of document or path is wrong. Don't think so because I fucking clicked a link
- File is in use. Don't think so because you fucking allowed me to check the fucking file out. I'm the only one working with that file. It is an excel I use to prepare my part of our group status meeting. Last change User is ME.
- Some idiot remark about saving. I'm opening the damn file! Then I would like to make some changes and save it. But I'm not just yet.
No worries, SharePoint has multiple ways of accessing the file. Just try something else ... Oh and now you dumb gibberish in my browser ... even better ...
Maybe it's not correctly checked out? Let's check it in and then out again. Nope ...
Let's try opening it in Excel Online ... just for the fun of it. There probably is too much data and pivot in it for Online to handle ...
Nice! Online even tells me nicely that the file is too big and I need The Real Excel. So let's do that ...
Wait .. what?? So now you open the damn file?
Gotta love SharePoint.
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Status: cursing some more at Sharepoint.
So I updated my reporting excel thingy. While I'm here could as well have a look at the general report ... same fucking errors ...
NOOOOOOO!!!
WADAFACK!!!!
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Given the length of your filename, I wouldn’t be surprised if you hit some MAX_PATH length limitation somewhere...
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Unlikely since the filename hasn't changed for over a year and the library has some Excel files with even longer names that don't have the issue. I'm guessing it's more something to do with the file itself ... Just had a look ... there all above 80 MB so the file size might be a factor.
The one with the really long name falls just short of 30MB and works as it just. e.g. I click it and it opens.
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Status: Disappointed that I’m no longer getting “All heap blocks were freed, no leaks are possible” when running my program under valgrind since the last system update added a memory leak in
dlopen.
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Status: Fighting (I lost) with Accounts over an issue that has been known for god knows how many years, since they've decided to name our spreadsheets after our real names, but put different months' timesheets in different directories. (It's ScarePoint(TM) so I was given some bollocks to do with permissions.)
Now if only I could close tickets with WONTFIX like this reply from accounts:
I don't have the resource to do anything in the short term no. If it causes a big problem to a lot of users I could get IT to look at changing the set-up but I'm not sure if it is worth the effort as it will take a long time to investigate and make a change in the logic. You can download older files and save them to your PC with a different name?
The reply I'd like to send, but CBA dealing with the shitstorm that will result:
Is there really anything to investigate? This has been a known issue for around 20 years (certainly since Excel 97) and isn't going to go away any time soon (http://blogs.office.com/2009/01/08/why-cant-i-open-two-files-with-the-same-name/), which makes the current setup - knowing this - even more puzzling.
... And breathe....
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Status: testing the Discourse chat interface. If you see a million consecutive AJAX requests in the logs somewhere, sorry.
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As
the employees of the City of Detroit and Hostessfederal taxpayers are currently finding out the hard way.http://www.pbgc.gov/news/press/releases/pr11-03.html
The IBC Portion will terminate as of October 20, 2010, and the PBGC will become responsible for the portion's entire $82.5 million unfunded benefit liability. The IBC Portion has no assets, as there were no funds in the ABA Plan attributable to IBC employees when the PBGC divided it.
Not sure what's going on with the City of Detroit, as the PBGC doesn't cover municipal stuff. I believe the court proceedings for the city's bankruptcy are still going on.
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Only with pocket change level money.
That's where ours is going due to the worsening ratio of workers to retirees. Like us, you guys just need more kids.
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Interesting times ahead in two or three decades...
Yes, ours have already started. Social Security recently started running deficits. Of course, the politicians will tell you that the "Trust Fund" has plenty of stuff saved up. Note that said fund is a list of IOUs from the Treasury from when they spent the money on other stuff.
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Status: Still waiting for a meeting that was supposed to start a half hour ago to start. Or, I guess, waiting for it to be rescheduled again.
This was a meeting that was originally scheduled for Monday afternoon but for reasons unknown it got pushed to Tuesday morning, but the junior dev was sick yesterday so it got pushed to today, and isn't happening.
This is also a meeting that is supposed to be used to actually give the junior dev the things he needs to keep doing work for a client. Reason it involves me is the end goal of the meeting is to figure out DB changes, which I'm stuck doing.
Follow-up: Still waiting on this meeting, which is supposed to be finished 5 minutes ago but never started and still not rescheduled.
And, like with yesterday, I've got fuck-all to do besides respond to emails from one of our clients when they come in.
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Status: Disappointed that I’m no longer getting “All heap blocks were freed, no leaks are possible” when running my program under valgrind since the last system update added a memory leak in dlopen.
Perhaps valgrind is helpfully letting you know the leak's not your fault.
