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Gates On Future of CS Education
lilrowdy18 writes "In an interesting article from Eweek, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates talks about how the lack of spending in research and development is 'kind of a crime'. He also talks about future problems that are facing the computer industry including outsourcing and the speed of upcoming processors." From the article: "Microsoft taps both native-born talent and foreign talent, but Gates said he is frustrated that more U.S. students are not going into computer science. 'The fastest growing major is physical education,' he said. 'The Chinese are going to wake up and say we missed this opportunity,' he joked."
In the USA, they're not only laying off IT and CS staff, they're even letting H1-B visas go unused, not that that's keeping Bill and others from lobbying to raise the H1-B cap anyway.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The word you were looking for was "exacerbate"
2) Going through Microsoft's dehumanizing interview process
I don't know where you got that one from. Sure, they ask strange questions, but they treat you quite well when you're interviewing.
I've had two friends interview for internships with Microsoft, and a third who got a job there after college. All three of them made it a point to brag about how well MS treated them at the interviews (despite the bizarre questions asked), and how well they treat their employees.
I watched the video of the interview with Maria Klawe when he said this and made so little sense that I followed up. Gates said (and I played it back several times) that the fastest growing major is physical education.
Klawe countered that she thought it was economics.
Googling shows that Klawe may have seen a Wall Street Journal article last week claiming that econ was the fastest growing major, but that article was very short on comparison data with other disciplines. It reported on a survey done by an economist for an economics journal and said little about the past, and little about other disciplines. The conclusion of fast growth needs support from the past and needs to be put in context of the number of students in other majors and all majors combined. A fabulous new Klingon language major can be shown to experience a phenomenal growth rate with few actual participants, if growth is simply reported as a ratio between new Klingon majors and old Klingon majors.
Gates was FAR worse than Klawe, though. His remarks on PE, which were presented in an offensive manner, by the way, were probably based on Bureau of Labor statistics. Recently, it has been shown that the growth rate for JOBS for PE majors is extremely high. This is completely different from saying that the growth of the major is extremely high. It also doesn't take too much digging to find out the reason for this: the graying of America and the rapidly growing health problems due to obesity are requiring some kind of response.
The other majors experience fast JOB growth rate are nursing and elementary school teaching. These, like the PE related jobs, are underpaid and undervalued. We need more of them because we don't deal with the root problems (the low value we as a society place on nurses and elementary school teachers). One reason we don't deal with the problem is because billionaire shithead college dropouts (who are perceived as somehow wise because they are good at making money) set a bad example.
Before badmouthing MS R&D... perhaps you should look into a bit of what they do: http://research.microsoft.com/.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Actually that's from the book "Dumbing Down Our Kids : Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, or Add" by my local talk show host Charlie Sykes.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Amen to that! MS is putting their money where their mouth is - MSR has an annual budget of $7 billion and dream jobs for well qualified researchers who can basically do what they want without worrying about converting research into products in the near term.
Bill Gates *WANTS* the market of programmers to be flooded. The glut of CS students during the dot com boom was fabulous for software companies who were hiring programmers for 35k a year *AFTER THE BUST*. The economy is starting to heat up again (until oil prices kill us, a story for another day) and wages are starting to pick up again, and companies don't want to pay them. Believe me, bill gates does nothing but serve himself, if he says we need more programmers, we most surely don't.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Let's see here:
1) Four years of one of the most time intensive majors in colleges
2) Going through Microsoft's dehumanizing interview process
3) Getting free soda in exchange for 80 hour work weeks at minimum wage
4) Getting fired at age 28 for being too old
Funny. I work at Microsoft as an intern, and I didn't find their interview process dehumanizing. It was mostly tests to see if I could solve problems, design as part of a team, and write clean, bug-free code. Sure it was a pain to fly to Redmond, but they paid for the tickets so I can't complain too much. And I work only 40 hours a week, for something substantially more than minimum wage. If my product were about to ship, I'd work longer hours for a few weeks, but that's not the case. I also haven't heard of them firing people... well, for just about anything, but particularly not for being "old."
It's also one of the nicest jobs in any industry: interesting work, no heavy lifting, flexible hours, air conditioning, great office machines, free soda, good view, mobility within the company, lots of benefits, good pay, minimal dress code (anything not revealing or offensive).
I'm not sure what more you could ask for other than a northern California location or free money. Or more women. But I have a girlfriend, so I don't care that much. (And yes, trolls, she's a female human, unrelated to me, about my age, and she dates me without any chemical, physical or monetary persuasion.)
Perhaps it's just a trap, and if I come to work here full-time, I'll see what it's really like.
Perhaps not. Current employees seem pretty happy with it. Maybe they put something in the free soda?
Point #1 stands on its own, but many interesting jobs require a lot of education to get.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Remember Python will not be the basis of Red Hat! or any other linux distro for that matter.
.net as the basis of Longhorn?
.net jobs are thriving, certainly in comparison to python and also new versions of vb.net are undergoing development, hardly a dead end.
Why would you rewrite your "perfectly good" (well from the viewpoint of MS), operating system, just to say you've got
There are plenty more uses of languages than creating operating systems... vb.net speeds up development for 3rd party apps and dynamic websites (as does python) and if you look at the job market you'll see that
*burns karma*
I think you're right on the target. It is impossible to outsource everything. Cubicle-only warriors who used to sit, get specs, code and ship the code somewhere are going to be gone. However, there is always consulting, security, management and other things that you can use to make money. Knowledge is capital. Use it wisely.
You need to study the tax code a little better.
You don't get the retail vail of a donation you produce as a tax write off. You can only claim the COGS (Cost of goods sold)
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
I thought too that the US were a long way ahead in technology. I came for a conference in Austin, TX last November, and on the way back I stayed for a week in NY. I was disappointed in some ways:
Ok, ok, I have to compensate with some positive points...
Anyway, back to the point: the US are not as advanced as many, Americans and not, think they are. At least not in the level of technology the citizens are exposed to, I have definitely seen enough to deem it unlikely that I was victim of a long series of unlucky coincidences.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
"There is no demand for IT workers."
Well, that is what the companies in the industry are claiming publically. But that is not what they are saying privately. What they are saying privately is "There is no demand for IT workers that expect a Middle Class salary and benefits."
In 2003, there were 78,000 IT workers layed off in Connecticut (sorry, no link to the details). But that same year in Connecticut, the IT industry in Connecticut went to Congress and got 65,000 MORE H1-B visa slots granted to them. If those jobs truly "disappeared", the increase in H1-B visas would not have been needed.
There was an interesting PBS Frontline story earlier this year about the "mini-silicon valley" in Central Florida (Orlando area). Many IT workers there were being layed off after working there for a number of years. One of the provisions for qualifying for their "exit packages" was training of their H1-B visa-enabled Indian IT replacements. The homes that the layed off workers were being forced by bankruptcy to sell were being bought up by their replacements. In some neighborhoods, more than half the homes were up for sale.
But the IT industry is not alone in the continuously downward pressure on wages. There was a news article from Boise, Idahoe, about a state legislator that was trying to drum up support for a bill that, on the state level, would penalize companies for hiring illegal aliens. Major players in the construction industry there were quoted as saying that they could not find Amwerican workers for their construction sites. But what they really meant was that they could not find American construction workers there willing to work for what they were now only willing to pay. In 2000, President Bill Clinton's administration prosecuted over 300 employers for their blatant policy of hiring illegal aliens. In 2001, President George Bush announced (prematurely) an amnesty program for illegal aliens. The floodgates opened, and in spite of post-9/11/2001 fears about domestic terrorism, the number of illegal aliens increased by 40%. In 2003, President George Bush's administration only prosecuted 13 employers for blatantly hiring illegal aliens, even though those numbers are way up.
Face it. The Federal government, many of your Congress-critters, and industries big and small are in the middle of the (effective) destruction of the Middle Class in America. This is all in accordance with what they call "globalization", which is little more than an excuse. In the 10 years since NAFTA was passed, and "globalization" started to "snowball", the Middle Class jobs that could readily be off-shore outsourced have been, at the same time that L1-A and H1-B visas have skyrocketed, along with many domestic jobs taken by illegal aliens.
Workers' wages have gone down, but the corporate executives that buy your Congress-critters salaries have gone up, sometimes spectacularly. When NAFTA was passed, there was considerable talk about "the level playing field", with concerns about wages, worker rights, benefits, and environmental issues that needed to be addressed when jobs moved offshore. Those concerns were never met by enabling legislation. Instead, the "level playing field" that American workers must adjust to are the prevalent wages of Bangalore, India and Shanghai, PRC.
Bill Gates does the very same thing at MSFT, so he is full of it. Short of a revolution, the only way out for the American Middle Class is to throw out the bought-and-paid-for politicians of both national political parties, and the sooner the better.
Well if you flip it around and realize that in 1960 you were not expected to live more than 5 years after retirement it might start to make sense. This was especially true for the more blue collar proffessions as at the time there was a notable gap in life expectency between those of average means vrs those who were wealthy. One of the real unherealded advances of the 20th century was that by its end that gap essentially ceased to exist in developed countries. So you might look back and find 65-66 as the average life expectancy in the 60's but if you took a closer look at more specific populations you would actually find a lower average of like 62-63 or even less.
If a company has a 1000 workers making an average of 50k that means labor costs 50,000,000 and you then have an added pension plan cost for previous workers. If you have one retired worker for everyone position you maintain that is an added cost of 37.5 million (worst case) and it will remain that way until they start to die. When these plans were introduced it was thought some would die relatively quickly and some would live a long time but it would average out the same way as life expectancy to about 5-6 years after retirement (or hopefully, from their perspective, less due to the actual demographic of their employees on the average life expectancy scale).
link to a look at life expectancy through the years.
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=13 9242
So in the 60's when these plans started out they looked win win. The company assured employees that long term work would be rewarded and that people had a deffinate goal to look forward to. The company had what it thought to be a reasonably short term liability that would gain them value in employee loyalty.
However, then life expectancy beyond the age of retirement doubled from 65/66 to 75+ in the intervening 30 years so that it no longer looks so good from the companies perspective. Its liability just doubled (or worse) and there was no increase in the benifit of offering the plans. Increasing the age of retirment without increasing the benifits seems unfair (IE have to work longer for less reward) so the age of retirment has not been increasing nearly as fast as medicine has been increasing life expectancy. To make matters worse, living longer is costing more and more and that raises the expense of medical benifits plans which were also a large part of those retirement packages.
In short the wages of current workers at companies that offer and are stuck with these plans are directly affected and the potential exists (see recent airline pension plan debacles) for the added liability of this increasing cost of providing pension plans to drag a company into the red in a hurry. Profit margians are razor thin and it dosn't take to much to adversely affect them. In this case liabilities entered into several decades ago are coming due in a BIG way and I fear we have only seen the lightest rumbles of the potential problems it could cause.
It is to some extent the same problem facing SS and the baby boomer bubble albeit without the added complexity of a potentially smaller work force trying to provide for a longer lived retired population.
Now if you want to understand CEO compensation plans consider how to get out of this mess. Offer a plan that is mostly at cost to the employee like 401K. IE they choose to deffer part of their check into a pension plan rather than you adding it to their compensation package. As an incentive you then say you will match funds. Matching plans normally come with what is known as a period of time in which you become vested in the plan. Most times if you are not with the company long enough to become vested then any extraneous contributions by the company in matching funds is defaulted back to the company.
Now the companies have some nasty options. One, not push 401k very well, and two find a way to have a roll over rate t
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