hahahaha oh iStock

[stockastic]

I wouldn't say these micro-corrections are a bad thing - maybe they show a committment to accurate accounting.   But I sure wouldn't want to be an IT guy at this company, with a pricing and commission structure, and search algoritums,  that are already far too complicated for my puny human brain, and are only likely to become more so.   I have to wonder how many of the technical people within IS actually understand it all? 

[jamirae]

I wouldn't say these micro-corrections are a bad thing - maybe they show a committment to accurate accounting.   But I sure wouldn't want to be an IT guy at this company, with a pricing and commission structure, and search algoritums,  that are already far too complicated for my puny human brain, and are only likely to become more so.   I have to wonder how many of the technical people within IS actually understand it all? 

or maybe someone is skimming pennies (or salami slicing) like they did in Office Space and Superman 3??  They gotta fund those trips around the world somehow!

[cathyslife]

.

[Jo Ann Snover]

...But I sure wouldn't want to be an IT guy at this company, with a pricing and commission structure, and search algoritums,  that are already far too complicated for my puny human brain, and are only likely to become more so.   I have to wonder how many of the technical people within IS actually understand it all? 

Computers are good at dealing with lots of details and massive computations - humans don't have to be able to replicate it, just to understand the algorithm and have enough discipline in their software process to do decent QA.

And you also don't have to have any one person understand everything - that's part of the deal with large software systems. I think many of their choices and pricing schemes are a bad idea, but not because it's complex to manage from the IT end.

And the reason you wouldn't want to be an IT guy with iStock is they give off every sign of having a massive pile of dreadful code that's been band-aided to the point that the only real solution is toss it and start over (which isn't cheap or easy given the circumstances).

I doubt that H&F - or a new private equity owner - is going to want to spend money to put any of this right, however. So as contributors, we're stuck with watching them closely to try and catch their worst eff-ups and pester them until we get some amount that's close to what we're owed.

[pancaketom]

or maybe someone is skimming pennies (or salami slicing) like they did in Office Space and Superman 3??  They gotta fund those trips around the world somehow!

Who needs to skim pennies when you can take from over 50% up to 85%?


For once I am sort of glad I didn't have any sales during that period.

[stockastic]

...But I sure wouldn't want to be an IT guy at this company, with a pricing and commission structure, and search algoritums,  that are already far too complicated for my puny human brain, and are only likely to become more so.   I have to wonder how many of the technical people within IS actually understand it all?  

Computers are good at dealing with lots of details and massive computations - humans don't have to be able to replicate it, just to understand the algorithm and have enough discipline in their software process to do decent QA.

And you also don't have to have any one person understand everything - that's part of the deal with large software systems. I think many of their choices and pricing schemes are a bad idea, but not because it's complex to manage from the IT end.

And the reason you wouldn't want to be an IT guy with iStock is they give off every sign of having a massive pile of dreadful code that's been band-aided to the point that the only real solution is toss it and start over (which isn't cheap or easy given the circumstances).

I doubt that H&F - or a new private equity owner - is going to want to spend money to put any of this right, however. So as contributors, we're stuck with watching them closely to try and catch their worst eff-ups and pester them until we get some amount that's close to what we're owed.

Well, who knows.  I worked on software for 30 years, although not in this sort of a business.  My admittedly biased opinion is that cr@ppy software is usually caused by requirements that are overly complex, poorly understood and constantly changing.    

I would like to insist on one point, though, which is that I actually do know how to spell "algorithm" [face palm].
 

[Jo Ann Snover]

...I would like to insist on one point, though, which is that I actually do know how to spell "algorithm" [face palm].
 

I thought that perhaps "algoritums" was a term of art for algorithms so bad/complex/opaque that you lived on a diet of Tums when working on them

There's certainly no shortage of dreadful software around, and bottom line is that it almost doesn't matter why things aren't working - we can't do squat to change it regardless of the inside story. And I wouldn't argue for one minute that complex, shifting requirements that the software team doesn't fully understand is one sure fire way to a bad end result

[stockastic]

[I thought that perhaps "algoritums" was a term of art for algorithms so bad/complex/opaque that you lived on a diet of Tums when working on them

Yes, AlgoriTums - antacid pills for software developers.

It bothers me that months go by, and when I look at downloads for a photo I still see "Total royalties: $0.00".    When (seemingly) little things don't get fixed I see an indication that nobody wants to touch the code, because things are in disarray.    

Maybe key people have left, or responsibility for the code was transferred to some other group that embraced it as they would a dead raccoon.

[BaldricksTrousers]

or maybe someone is skimming pennies (or salami slicing) like they did in Office Space and Superman 3??  They gotta fund those trips around the world somehow!

Who needs to skim pennies when you can take from over 50% up to 85%?


For once I am sort of glad I didn't have any sales during that period.

They have, in fact, been "penny shaving" for years (I didn't know that term for it until now). All transactions are rounded down to the nearest full penny. With small sums it can make a very considerable percentage difference. If you have a sale that earns you 7.9c and iS "normalises" it to 7c, your percentage is cut from 15% to 13.3% - and as far as I know there is nothing in their terms that permits them to reduce your share in this way but it has been their practice since 95 or 96.
When I point it out (as I have done several times) I usually either get ignored or someone laughs at me for being stupid and mean enough to care about fractions of a penny, though I suspect that if iStock announced it was slicing another percent off commissions there would be uproar.

[cathyslife]

They have, in fact, been "penny shaving" for years (I didn't know that term for it until now). All transactions are rounded down to the nearest full penny. With small sums it can make a very considerable percentage difference. If you have a sale that earns you 7.9c and iS "normalises" it to 7c, your percentage is cut from 15% to 13.3% - and as far as I know there is nothing in their terms that permits them to reduce your share in this way but it has been their practice since 95 or 96.
When I point it out (as I have done several times) I usually either get ignored or someone laughs at me for being stupid and mean enough to care about fractions of a penny, though I suspect that if iStock announced it was slicing another percent off commissions there would be uproar.

Not everyone ignored or laughed at you. It added yet one more thing to my list of reasons to leave, and I did. Most didn't. That means istock/getty got a stamp of approval for the cheating. In fact, they added one more salami slicer (that term cracks me up...thanks for posting the links, jamirae!) to it with the clawbacks.

[ShadySue]

I wouldn't say these micro-corrections are a bad thing - maybe they show a committment to accurate accounting.   But I sure wouldn't want to be an IT guy at this company, with a pricing and commission structure, and search algoritums,  that are already far too complicated for my puny human brain, and are only likely to become more so.   I have to wonder how many of the technical people within IS actually understand it all? 

or maybe someone is skimming pennies (or salami slicing) like they did in Office Space and Superman 3??  They gotta fund those trips around the world somehow!

Does anyone know how it works when your 15/whatever% doesn't round to an exact cent - do they always round down, or does it go up or down in the usual manner? I think there was an official answer to that last year, but I can't remember what it was.

[cathyslife]

I wouldn't say these micro-corrections are a bad thing - maybe they show a committment to accurate accounting.   But I sure wouldn't want to be an IT guy at this company, with a pricing and commission structure, and search algoritums,  that are already far too complicated for my puny human brain, and are only likely to become more so.   I have to wonder how many of the technical people within IS actually understand it all? 

or maybe someone is skimming pennies (or salami slicing) like they did in Office Space and Superman 3??  They gotta fund those trips around the world somehow!

Does anyone know how it works when your 15/whatever% doesn't round to an exact cent - do they always round down, or does it go up or down in the usual manner? I think there was an official answer to that last year, but I can't remember what it was.

I'm thinking they always round down, which is why there was a big discussion about it.

[lisafx]

They have, in fact, been "penny shaving" for years (I didn't know that term for it until now). All transactions are rounded down to the nearest full penny. With small sums it can make a very considerable percentage difference. If you have a sale that earns you 7.9c and iS "normalises" it to 7c, your percentage is cut from 15% to 13.3% - and as far as I know there is nothing in their terms that permits them to reduce your share in this way but it has been their practice since 95 or 96.
When I point it out (as I have done several times) I usually either get ignored or someone laughs at me for being stupid and mean enough to care about fractions of a penny, though I suspect that if iStock announced it was slicing another percent off commissions there would be uproar.

Really excellent point.  I have always been bothered by that too.  Just thought I'd double check that you meant 2005 or 2006...?

[BaldricksTrousers]

They have, in fact, been "penny shaving" for years (I didn't know that term for it until now). All transactions are rounded down to the nearest full penny. With small sums it can make a very considerable percentage difference. If you have a sale that earns you 7.9c and iS "normalises" it to 7c, your percentage is cut from 15% to 13.3% - and as far as I know there is nothing in their terms that permits them to reduce your share in this way but it has been their practice since 95 or 96.
When I point it out (as I have done several times) I usually either get ignored or someone laughs at me for being stupid and mean enough to care about fractions of a penny, though I suspect that if iStock announced it was slicing another percent off commissions there would be uproar.

Really excellent point.  I have always been bothered by that too.  Just thought I'd double check that you meant 2005 or 2006...?

Lol, yes, my decades are getting a bit confused now that i'm 570 years old. Goes with the territory, i suppose

[KB]

When I point it out (as I have done several times) I usually either get ignored or someone laughs at me for being stupid and mean enough to care about fractions of a penny

It's safe to assume (though it might be wrong), that the average sale is rounded down by a half a penny. If the average commission is 20% (obviously I have no idea if it works out that way or not), then they are gaining 20% of half a penny on every sale they make. If they sold 20,000,000 in 2011 as is theorized (give or take a few million), that is $20,000 (if my arithmetic is correct) that is being gained by Getty's use of truncation rather than rounding.

Clearly per contributor it is a tiny amount. But taken as a whole, that's $20K that should be going to contributors that is instead going to Getty.

[princigalli]

Where's the joke? They identified the errors and are doing their best to repair and inform. This id excellent. If they didn't do anything I'm sure most contributors wouldn't even have noticed. And some companies would be happy to keep this quiet.