patrick.net

pkennedy says

Unofficial/non meeting related conversations are often missed as well, leaving people in other locations blind. It really makes it difficult to get a lot of good work from those people then.
So having people come here, to work locally is very cost effective. I’ve worked with teams where people were flying back and forth all the time. People were having issues syncing up, time differences were causing headaches for all (6am meetings, or midnight meetings), etc.

LOL! I done that many times over every quarter with each of our foreign entities. That is the cost of doing business, otherwise its all emails. Once a year our world wide sales org has a kick off meeting, when all the teams come here for a beer bash and talk about Sales objectives.

from page B3 of today's San Jose Mercury News:

"Parents raising funds to save teacher jobs"

"A group of parents hoping to prevent more than 100 teachers in the Cupertino Union School DIstrict Union School from losing their jobs kicked off a massive fundraising campaign Tuesday at Nimitz Elementary School in Sunnyvale that attracted a packed and raucous house, including dozens of students with piggy banks ready to contribute to the cause".

"Parents organizing the 'Their Future is Now' campaign hope to raise $3 million by May 15 to save as many as 107 K-08 teachers from receiving pink slips."

California will be even cheaper once the Chinese currency appreciates.