I have the Virgin Mobile LG Optima V, which is $150 now and goes on sale for less periodically. That's $150 unsubsidized and with a month-to-month, no contract plan. It's not the greatest phone in the world but I'm largely satisfied with cost/performance tradeoff.
Are locked phones really unsubsidized? Not $200 subsidy, obviously, but maybe $50 or $100, considering that Virgin expects you to use it with a $30+ monthly plan and would treat it as a customer acquisition cost.
As I understand subsidized vs. unsubsidized, yes it is. I can buy the phone without entering into a contract. I can terminate service with VM after 30 days. I can sell the phone to someone else who can choose to buy service from VM or not.
True it isn't unlocked, but I'm not aware of anyone saying unsubsidized == unlocked.
I work for Vodafone (Australia) and we definitely subsidise our locked phones. We charge a $75 (first six months)/$25 (thereafter) unlocking fee to cover the subsidy costs.
Given that the subsidy provided by the carrier is funded by the monthly contract payment of the customer, it probably isn't worth splitting hairs here.
It is worth splitting hairs because AT&T and Verizon are guaranteed to either make $75+/mo (it was $110 for my minimal minutes plan) for 2+ years OR a $200+ cancellation fee to make up for the cost of the phone.
You can buy a Virgin mobile phone and never activate it. You can stop paying without penalty after your first month. That's unsubsidised.
OTOH, Virgin USA may still be subsidizing it (by charging below cost), and just willing to take a loss if you never activate it. Since it only works on the Virgin network anyways, this isn't a risky gamble.
I disagree, at least in the startup case. In my experience, unless you know the person very well and they have demonstrated that they can deliver what they need to, you're only adding extra headache for yourself. If someone's work is drifting away from what you intend, it's a lot easier to spot that over their shoulder and change courses on the spot rather than wait for code to land in your repo and find out after a lot of time and effort has been wasted.
Well that's my point, actually. There should be no 'wait for code to land in your repo'. There should be some peer review before then. There should be daily discussion on progress and problems.
Coders shouldn't be a black box that you hope to get the right answer out of. They should be talked to, but talked to as adults. You don't need to pressure them, you just need to ask for progress (not deadlines!) and help them resolve any issues they have.
Any programmers that have been beaten down in traditional shops will try to avoid the above because they'll think you're pressuring them slyly, instead of openly. You have to be absolutely open and honest and ethical about everything to overcome that.
Maybe they are expecting something more than a worker who can keep in sync with others? If the very small team is the whole company, they may be expecting someone they can brainstorm with at random times without having to get you on Skype. Why would they want to take an extra step to keep you in sync when the rest of the in-office team already is?
Being the only person who's remote can suck, yes, and keeping one or two people in sync with an otherwise co-located team can also be a challenge (and not necessarily worthwhile for an early-stage company).
I was more wondering why more founders don't see the value in building companies where the whole team is not necessarily distributed all the time, but has the flexibility to WFH or work from the road whenever they feel like it.
Nice! I really appreciate the tone of Tim's post in that it acknowledges both the strengths and weaknesses of NOSQL in general and of Cloudant Search in particular in an honest manner.
In Stonebraker’s opinion, “old SQL (as he calls it) is good for nothing” and needs to be “sent to the home for retired software.” After all, he explained, SQL was created decades ago before the web, mobile devices and sensors forever changed how and how often databases are accessed.
