what the hell is this?

lmao.. Ronnies got a good sense of humor...

When I post in a blog, I always get the message: your post is awating moderation, or something like that.

I do not understand why chess.com did not implent this as standard for profile notes (and the owner has to give it free). Thus this problem would have been solved (and personnel saved)

I does not make sense- like posted above - to report nasty comments to the stuff, because this is a general problem, all chess.com is full of nasty language. It must be at least several hundred thousands of profiles! As I told, it is too late, you will not get rid of this easily anymore.

Thats interesting.  I remember when i first joined i was getting begging letters telling me that the site hardly made enough money to stay up and would I consider subscribing. So i did and bought a membership for $99 i think it was at the time, only to find out later that ol Eric was paying himself 40 times more than other employees for the sole reason that he has rights to the domain name.  Now you can imagine why i felt not a little hurt because what was being projected was not a little different from the reality, don't you think?

well, the times, they are a changin..

there was a time, when chess.com was a "David", sending out begging letter, I remember that even kohai offered some benefits for inviting chesscube-friends, and that kind of stuff

must have been > 4 years ago

now chess.com is Goliath

PS: honestly speaking, it was much more sympathetic in the old days

With respect......

I am sure that we all took out the membership we did (or not) because we felt it represented value to us. Now Chess.com is a business - and like any other, it has the right to set the prices at the levels it believes the market will bear.

And it is nothing to do with us, as customers, what the business owners choose to pay employees, or each other.

If we don't like it, we can leave.

For my part, Chess.com appear to do a good job and provide a platform for me, and others like me, to enjoy a range of activities.

I am envious about what Bank presidents get paid, relative to tellers - but that's life, i still use a Bank.

I don't know you, Erik, but I think I played you once. A job well done in setting up Chess.com. and in my opinion, as the CEO you have the right to run the business as you see fit.

well said, everyone complains about what employees see as a slight in relative salary, yet no one knows the dynamics of running a business and its overhead.

 I dont know Erik or his business but what i do know is some staff who have been on salary here. Salary they never complained about.  In fact, they felt they were paid well and knowing certain facts i feel Erik was beyond generous.  

I have also had my own business and can attest to the fact that running a business with employees is expensive. This is probably a corporation< if its not set up that way it should be> and filled with expenses your average person doesn't see. Im not certain of the staffing here but in new york where i was an employer, < sold my business last year> between salary and benefits, it costs an employer roughly $66,000 to pay someone $50 000 a year.<  I think more at this point) take 20 employees and you've got a million plus $240,000 to keep them employed. thats just employees.  Not accounting for general expenses. granted there arent as many here as there were in my brick and mortar business but the overhead he would he would have would be databases, hosting, auto responders, domains are cheap yes, but running a site as large as this one is, is not. So when you say that hes being paid 40 times what his employees are being paid, i doubt that. just seeing this site from a business point of view. but even if he was, he would deserve it. He is by no means slighting his staff. Mods are another argument all together but if someone volunteers to be a mod that is their business.

No one objects to the legality of whether a CEO can run a business as they see fit, what people are objecting to is the ethics of awarding oneself 40 times more than other employees.  If you think that is fair then you can support that organisation and tell us why its fair.  Other people have issues with it and do not want to support an organisation that they see as creating inequality.  As for using banks, no one is forced to use banks, again on the same basis that it creates inequality ( I don't see how anyone can dispute the fact its empirically established), you can put your money into a credit union or a local authority bank.  Again the reason might be entirely ethical.

Personally I am self employed and have run a business for the last 20 years.  The people who I did employ I treated fairly and with respect.  I loathe the idea of exploitation and not once did I ever consider that I deserve to be paid more than them.  Infact the idea seems ludicrous to me.  They were doing just as much work as I was sometimes more and the only reason that I got paid more was because they were making me money.  How anyone can think that I deserve that I cannot say, it was simply a matter of circumstance.

It did not have IM David Pruess's signature on it. It did have a chess.com logo on it though.  That makes the owner directly responsible for it, does it not?

I dont think its fair. i paid my employees well. I just dont feel it applies here with the fact's that i know. I could be wrong but i dont think so.

and therin lies the rub, we simply dont have all the facts.

I guess thats my point exactly. everyone comments and forms opinions on things they know very little about. I dont know erik but i have heard about him through others and feel he is a very generous person from what i know. Having virtual employees is very different then having employees that you sit and work with all day.

If I recall there was a bunch of phony players created so someone in Bangladesh could post spam forum topics that were just ads for pay-per-view sports, gambling and prostitution. They'd clog up the most recent forum notices and had to be zapped constantly.  It's likely these nuts.

I agree with sleeping beauty. I own a mowing business. I make more than those I employ and that reason is simple. They didn't buy the mowers, or weedeaters, chain saws, trucks, trailers, or the building to store all of that. It is not cheap or easy to run a business.

      Back in the 90's a lot of people in Calif we're getting rich. And when the real estate bubble popped in 08, a lot of people we're getting poor. People think the good times will roll forever. This "Why I left My Dream Job" guy is just one of many who are angry that the well is dry. The real problem today is that CALIF WELLS ARE DRY! 

and what do any of us know about this disgruntled sh!t stirrer anyway. lets hear some facts before we hang someone out to dry.

In before the lock!

interesting idea

I was talking to my tax guy today. He says the U.S. today is poor not what it was before. Public debt maxed, American personal debt $15k per household...

I said it's simple how America got there. American workers are paid the barest minimum CEOs Earn 331 Times As Much As Average Workers, 774 Times As Much As Minimum Wage Earners

They pay less tax percentage wise than average workers, capital gains are barely taxed...

Trade Agreements allows that concentrated capital to bleed out of the country...

Of course the country is poor...politicians have rigged the system so that any capital gained from GNP upflows into the pockets of the untaxed few.

My own city not taxing the people who HAVE the money, so they're rigging traps to get the average joe/jane  (who're barely making it already) to pay bogus fines...sales tax gone up by 4% in 5 years, gas tax, fees, phone tax...stuff that people didn't pay before...they're squeezing blood out of cactus...

I said that the country's not poor the GDP has never stopped going up...it's just that the profits made is no longer America's (wages hasn't gone up in 15 years, in some sectors it's even gone down)...but in the hands of the elite few who's threatening at every turn to "take their money" elsewhere if politicians don't make them happy...

It's a great country otherwise

...a national moral and socio-economic conscience and fairness in the U.S. would be ideal though...