I am the blue screen of death

[digitaldiscipline]

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/news?slug=ap-supremecourt-adelphiafraud

I have a rather impressive track record of previous employers getting their asses nailed to the wall for their unscrupulous bullshit after I've left.

Busy Beaver: PWNT by competition
Edit Ink: Sued, deceased*
Adelphia: See above link


* This is the only one I took an active role in salting the earth, BTW

Comments

[vatine]

Gosh! I've heard of Edit Ink (as in "don't ever do business with them if you're a writer") before.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I was one of their stable of manuscript editors. their big bait-and-switch was claiming that the two head honchos did all the work; when they started getting called on that, they claimed everyone had at least a master's degree. yeah, no.

my napkin math suggested they were netting about $75,000 per editor, annually, based on the pittance we were paid, the exorbitant fees they charged, and the throughput that was expected. I was not sorry to see them get nailed to the wall. my two-hour conversation with the district attorney after getting fired was *very* theraputic.

[vatine]

I can imagine. Netting $75k is not bad, in and of itself. I guess there were vastly more than one of you?

[etcet.livejournal.com]

A couple dozen of us. It was an extremely lucrative scam for the two people running it.

But, let me put it another way: we were paid about $20k annually, and the pressure we were under to perform? There was no shortage of resentment when that little profit margin fact became known to my colleagues.

[vatine]

Oh, the "not bad" is certainly from the view of whoever's netting the $75k. I can quite imagine learning that your $20k pre-tax is actually something like $100k - $200k from the payer (I am very much guessing at taxes, fees and other things that would add $20k and $75k to much more than $95k).

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I think the requirement was ~100 pages per day @ a charge to customers of $5 per page = $500/day or $2500 per week; times 50 weeks, that's $125k. Even figuring in the cost of things like insurance, operating overhead (small admin staff of 5 people (accountant, office manager, gofer, two phone fish), and the kickbacks for referrals, you see where my napkin math comes from.

$125k (gross) - $25k (paycheck) - $25k (frictional losses) = $75k (net)

[vatine]

Yep, I was initially tempted to say $120k, but then realised I had No Idea how much the expected things around taht would be, so guarded myself with "100k-200k".

[etcet.livejournal.com]

we get our napkins from the same place, i see.

[vatine]

Ballpark Supplies and Rough Sensanumbahs?