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Derrek
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 5:32 pm Post subject: A big congrats to former Worknplay webmaster |
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A big congrats to SY, former worknplay webmaster. She now has a web job with the US Embassy.
I'm sure worknplay is sorry to have lost her.
Congrats SY! |
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Canucksaram
Joined: 29 Apr 2003
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 6:07 pm Post subject: |
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CENSORED for the sake of a friend.
Last edited by Canucksaram on Fri May 20, 2005 10:51 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Canucksaram
Joined: 29 Apr 2003
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 6:15 pm Post subject: |
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Sorry for the double post.
Last edited by Canucksaram on Tue May 17, 2005 5:46 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Gollum
Joined: 04 Sep 2003
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 6:26 pm Post subject: |
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This story is one which really burns my bum, and reminds me of so many things I hate about brainless and overbearing bosses in Korea who feel they must "prove" their power.
As I understand it, SY and another woman were publically fired and humiliated in front of their coworkers for only working a 12 hour day instead of 14. Apparently the boss came to the office at like midnight on a Friday night, I believe, (yes, they were expected to work that late sometimes) and blew up because two of his employees had left at 10:00pm. Keep in mind that they had started work at 10am. They were WAY overworked at that place.
Then, a few days later, the boss freaks out and suddenly realizes that he's fired the two people who do all or nearly all of his website updating. He can't do it himself, so what does he do? He has his remaining employees call SY begging her to come back to work. Apparently he couldn't afford to lose face by apologizing for his grossly stupid error.
Thankfully, she didn't go back, and found something better. My friend said that WNP is now trying to hire a new webmaster, and placing ads that they would like to hire a filipino for the job. I'm sure a filipino is much more easily manipulated. |
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chronicpride
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 6:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Isn't WnP basically a recruiting outfit that decided to do something bigger and different with their site? |
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Gollum
Joined: 04 Sep 2003
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 6:30 pm Post subject: |
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| chronicpride wrote: |
| Isn't WnP basically a recruiting outfit that decided to do something bigger and different with their site? |
You mean you don't know? I always figured you worked with them somehow with promotions or something.
They have a very nice site, although having the name "worknplay" is very confusing to spread by word-of-mouth. If you type "workandplay" it's a different company. Also, being .co.kr was never a good move, in my opinion.
They had the perfect opportunity to gain a lot of business, and did -- but never charged for it, after the ES scandal. Rather than capitalize on the situation, the boss goes and fires two important people in a fit or rage. Go figure. |
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chronicpride
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 9:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Gollum wrote: |
| chronicpride wrote: |
| Isn't WnP basically a recruiting outfit that decided to do something bigger and different with their site? |
You mean you don't know? I always figured you worked with them somehow with promotions or something.
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No way. I'd never get behind a site like that and help promote it. It's a totally amateur op, as well as design-wise.
I remember when they contracted Conor/Saharzie to write content for them when they first went live, and I started thinking that they may be something to watch as they're at least willing to allocate funds to get it going, but looks the recruiter within them eventually reared its ugly head and took over. I give the boss some credit in 1st trying to attract and leverage the esl community, before revealing that they are just recruiters. |
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Derrek
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 9:28 pm Post subject: |
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| chronicpride wrote: |
| Gollum wrote: |
| chronicpride wrote: |
| Isn't WnP basically a recruiting outfit that decided to do something bigger and different with their site? |
You mean you don't know? I always figured you worked with them somehow with promotions or something.
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No way. I'd never get behind a site like that and help promote it. It's a totally amateur op, as well as design-wise.
I remember when they contracted Conor/Saharzie to write content for them when they first went live, and I started thinking that they may be something to watch as they're at least willing to allocate funds to get it going, but looks the recruiter within them eventually reared its ugly head and took over. I give the boss some credit in 1st trying to attract and leverage the esl community, before revealing that they are just recruiters. |
Well, not defending the owner of the site, but two things...
1. The site does not look amateurish, although the owner obviously has no business brain. Look at Daves... it's hardly beautiful, but gets the job done.
2. Other than charge for ads, they had to make money somehow. I am not big on recruiters either, but they can be useful and are a way to make money.
Do you expect someone to sink a ton of cash into an ESL board merely as a "public service" to the ESL community? Maybe I'm just not understanding what you wrote. |
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chronicpride
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 9:56 pm Post subject: |
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| I think you and I have different definitions of amateur and decent web design. Anyways, look at the existing business model of sites like Daves or www.gaijinpot.com. Dave pulls $25K+ a month (plus another $25-30K from the regular job board, as well), only from Korean school and recruiter ads. But contracts a web designer every few years to tweak the design, uses free forum software, and considering the amount of server glitches this site has, he's probably going through a cheap web host. Factoring in his bandwidth usage, he's probably paying $20/mnth for hosting. Outside of his annual domain name renewal of probably $50/year at the most, I just explained the total cost of operating this site and you can get an idea of the operating margin that one can do, if they invest and build a proper site, make it a place for users to call home, attract the newbs, and run ads. WnP was too stupid and in need of a quick buck to realize this, and have opted to shelve broad development of their site, so they can focus on the small quick beans of recruiting. Gaijinpot pulls about $30K a month from Japanese school ads. Difference there, is that Gaijinpot has put their money (some) back into the site and has employed a small staff. Their net is smaller than Daves, but you get the idea of what business model pays and what doesn't. Recruiting is a flawed business model, with incredibly high-maintenance clients, with sporadic influxes of revenue which is frequently in a state of negotiation to begin with. I learned the hard way that starting up a recruiting business is like a Korean coming up with the idea to open up a 100 pyeong restaurant, just because 20 of his friends told him how good his wife's samgyetang is. |
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Derrek
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 10:11 pm Post subject: |
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| chronicpride wrote: |
| I think you and I have different definitions of amateur and decent web design. Anyways, look at the existing business model of sites like Daves or www.gaijinpot.com. Dave pulls $25K+ a month (plus another $25-30K from the regular job board, as well), only from Korean school and recruiter ads. But contracts a web designer every few years to tweak the design, uses free forum software, and considering the amount of server glitches this site has, he's probably going through a cheap web host. Factoring in his bandwidth usage, he's probably paying $20/mnth for hosting. Outside of his annual domain name renewal of probably $50/year at the most, I just explained the total cost of operating this site and you can get an idea of the operating margin that one can do, if they invest and build a proper site, make it a place for users to call home, attract the newbs, and run ads. WnP was too stupid and in need of a quick buck to realize this, and have opted to shelve broad development of their site, so they can focus on the small quick beans of recruiting. Gaijinpot pulls about $30K a month from Japanese school ads. Difference there, is that Gaijinpot has put their money (some) back into the site and has employed a small staff. Their net is smaller than Daves, but you get the idea of what business model pays and what doesn't. Recruiting is a flawed business model, with incredibly high-maintenance clients, with sporadic influxes of revenue which is frequently in a state of negotiation to begin with. I learned the hard way that starting up a recruiting business is like a Korean coming up with the idea to open up a 100 pyeong restaurant, just because 20 of his friends told him how good his wife's samgyetang is. |
No, I just don't consider the words "website design" and "business model" to mean the same thing. If I want to be specific about a certain aspect -- such as how the site physically looks -- I say, "design." That is what I was talking about.
Asthetically, worknplaylooks nice. I'm not about to defend the business practices of the owner, however. |
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chronicpride
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 11:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Derrek wrote: |
No, I just don't consider the words "website design" and "business model" to mean the same thing.
Asthetically, worknplaylooks nice. I'm not about to defend the business practices of the owner, however. |
I don't make the distinction of business model to sway an assessment of good design. Good design and development work to me is stuff like:
http://www.billybussey.com/
http://www.2advanced.com/
http://www.newzealand.com/
For something that's more catered to our area of the net, I'd say http://www.japan-zine.com/ would be considered a well-designed site.
Worknplay is about $400 better than PusanWeb. |
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Derrek
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 11:35 pm Post subject: |
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| chronicpride wrote: |
| Derrek wrote: |
No, I just don't consider the words "website design" and "business model" to mean the same thing.
Asthetically, worknplaylooks nice. I'm not about to defend the business practices of the owner, however. |
I don't make the distinction of business model to sway an assessment of good design. Good design and development work to me is stuff like:
http://www.billybussey.com/
http://www.2advanced.com/
http://www.newzealand.com/
For something that's more catered to our area of the net, I'd say http://www.japan-zine.com/ would be considered a well-designed site.
Worknplay is about $400 better than PusanWeb. |
They had redesigned everything on that site, however it wasn't implemented yet. They were planning it soon, however I doubt it'll be anytime soon, since the webmaster was fired. |
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chronicpride
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 11:43 pm Post subject: |
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| Webmaster doesn't always mean web designer. It can often just mean the person who is in charge of the site operations. If she was the designer, do you know if she has a link to her online portfolio of past work? I'm curious to see what she's done and what she's good at. |
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Whitey
Joined: 22 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Tue May 17, 2005 1:42 am Post subject: bad form |
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| Gollum wrote: |
| Thankfully, she didn't go back, and found something better. My friend said that WNP is now trying to hire a new webmaster, and placing ads that they would like to hire a filipino for the job. I'm sure a filipino is much more easily manipulated. |
That is kind of insulting to a filipino. Imagine if we substituted Jew, Black, or any other racial or ethnic group for Filipino. That is just plain wrong. You should be ashamed of yourself in making such racist comments. |
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chronicpride
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue May 17, 2005 1:55 am Post subject: |
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| Give the big D/G a break. Don't fault him for what his country has made him into. There's a person in there for chrissakes. |
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