Survial of Senate Health Reform Bill Uncertain

I was thrilled last year when Obama was elected president and Democrats took both houses of Congress. I thought the Democrats were poised to take the US in a more liberal (i.e. better) direction. While I continue to have great hope for Obama, things have not gone as smoothly as I'd imagined. Although I've been disappointed about the lack of progress in many areas that Obama promised to address, the current debate over healthcare worries me alot. Despite the US being closer than ever to passing healthcare reform, the Senate bill is in dangerous straits. Republicans were a predictable obstacle, leaving Democrats in a precarious position, which allowed no room for defectors. This has allowed a small number of Democrats (plus Joe Liebermann) to take the spotlight by insisting that various provisions be included or excluded. Even Howard Dean, the chairman of the DNC, has weighed in. What shocked me was that he's actually against the Senate bill. I understand that thinks it isn't strong enough (I myself would have preferred the same), but shouldn't he as chairman be trying to rally Democrats at this critical juncture? If we, as he suggests, kill the bill, won't that significantly hurt the chances that we pass healthcare reform at all? More importantly, if we fail now, what is that going to do to the credibility of the party? I believe the Republican answer to this question is probably correct: Democrats will get punished at the polls in future elections. They made it pretty clear that their strategy is to rob Democrats of a victory on this issue, as they expect it will lead to Democratic losses starting in 2010. While they have gone through much trouble to stir up their tea bag supporters, it seems all they needed to do was wait for Democrats shoot themselves in the foot. It seems that an untimely death of the Senate bill at this point would not only dash all hopes for healthcare reform of any kind for many years to come, it would prevent us from making progress on every liberal issue we hope to address for the foreseeable future. This is an extremely stupid political risk that a handful of Democrats have created over comparatively minor issues. Unfortunately, this follows a pretty consistent tradition within the party of breaking ranks at the expense of the party as a whole. It's really hard to support a party when it jeopardizes its own agenda by allowing internal disagreements to derail the legislative process. When they were the minority, it was easy to understand why they couldn't accomplish much, but now that Democrats own both houses of Congress and the White House, it's time to get down to the business.

Glassdoor.com, please improve your reviews

I discovered glassdoor.com a few weeks ago. It seems like a good site. Basically, it's a place where people can rant or rave about employers (either past or present). The reason I was drawn to the site was because I wanted to know more about how much software engineers get paid. I was surprised at the amount of information they had collected from their users on the subject. It was also fun to compare different companies, and there were even a few surprises. One of my favorites was Lehman Brothers. I know you have to take this with a grain of salt, but look at how many vice presidents and senior vice presidents they had. Had I known this, shorting their stock would have been a no-brainer.

Salary data is nice, but they also have employee-written reviews. Of course, you're not likely to find reviews on small companies, but it seems that any large company is going to have a healthy set of reviews. The problem is that most of the reviews are very shallow. I think this is because of the format they have chosen to use, which consists of three sections: pros, cons, and advice to senior management. I think the last section adds an interesting twist (although I find that most reviewers do not know what to do with it), but all three sections encourage people to just list bullet points, instead of providing thoughtful reviews.

An example of the "bullet point" style that I really hate is when someone says he or she really hates (or in the rare case loves) the corporate culture. This really doesn't help the reader figure out whether he or she would enjoy working there, because a culture that suits the reviewer very well might be a reader's worst nightmare. One thing that would really help clarify these points would be examples of actions or behaviors that the reviewer has observed that demonstrate exactly what kind of culture exists within a company. Perhaps, the three-section format makes it easier to write a review by providing a framework for people to work with, but I think it has an overall negative effect on the quality of the reviews that users submit. Even if you want to write a detailed review, it just doesn't feel like you have space to do it in.

The other thing I don't like about their reviews is that you cannot sort them by helpfulness. Basically what they have is a mini-form where you can give a review a thumbs up or down on whether you found it helpful. This feature is of very little value, because if 10 people write low-quality reviews the day after you write an extremely luminary one, yours will get pushed down the display order. I can see why it would make sense to sort by date, but what I really want is to be able to sort by helpfulness. This should not be difficult to implement, since they already the up or down vote feature.