It's not the brand that is tainted. People simply cannot trust their projects on someone else's commercial objectives. There is no indication this is changing.
Having been on the receiving side of GSoC students, I'd say 90% of them come from poor countries and are looking for the money. I've seen some that weren't students at all and seemed to be working for "consulting" companies already.
The title is very clickbaity. Just search for "chart sonification" and see there is a lot of research in this area. Maybe they meant to emphasize that this is a browser extension?
I've been working remotely for 2 years now and my team has people from all over the world. People mostly talk on IRC but not a lot (about important stuff) and there is a HUGE number of periodic meetings. I can't stand them. What's worse, every time things start to appear to be going off track, the initial reaction is to always set up a new periodic meeting about topic X... this is supposed to bring people together but useful interaction never happens on meetings (too many people trying to save face). It's horrible.
When talking to external partners, our management brags about having a remote team with people from all over the world, but I don't think they understand how to make this work.
Sometimes I feel we should all be in a single office because of this, but then I remember other companies have figured this out so I don't have to feel bad about wanting to work remotely.
That's unfortunate. Nobody likes to feel cheated at work.
I'd suggest to try and remediate the situation first. Try to cancel the insurance and get your money back if possible.
If that doesn't work and working there isn't that great anymore (no friends, not learning much, career dead-end, no perspective of higher salary, etc).. I would look for another job if I could afford that financially.
In big corporations, as much as your boss may like you and the work you do, his/her hands might be tied: no leverage with HR, they have a "problem" to deal with, since official channels have been used to complain.. now that might be making him/her look bad to other higher ups, etc.
It seems like this matches my experience. My colleagues were directors at an American multinational with a presence in China. From what I could gather, they led a pretty sweet life there.
Two years ago, two colleagues from China came to visit (South American country) on a business trip (mostly training and technical discussions).
I took them to a nice restaurant after a day of meetings. I said something about the censorship being bad after they said they couldn't access some websites I mentioned.
They answered a nervous "It's ok" and an awkward silence followed. I sensed they had a lot of things to say about that but even 6000km+ away from China, they still didn't feel comfortable voicing any concerns.
It helps to have actual real life experience under your belt when making such claims. You seem to be parroting what countless rants have already repeated without much content.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2003-September/m...