Slashdot Mirror
Google and Yahoo Creating Brain Drain?
Searchbistro writes "Software-engineering talent is flocking to Google and Yahoo. Business Week explores the possibility that the big two search companies are creating a brain drain on the rest of the industry. Google snapped up about 230 engineers last quarter. Some stolen superstars are Louis Monier, director of eBay, advanced technology research, and Kai-Fu Lee, a top-flight researcher at Microsoft. Yahoo hired dozens of top engineers, including Larry Tesler, former vice-president at Amazon.com. 'While the Internet leaders snatch up top tech talent, that creates headaches elsewhere. Some startups, for instance, say the talent drain has made their own hiring more difficult.'"
... and even the geeks are out at play. Longest I've seen an article with just an FP and nothing else in a long time.
So the standards won't drop around here.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I can't get enough.
Where employees are rewarded for thinking up something new. Like this
Hey, with these top-list people out of the running, doesn't it make it a bit easier to be hired if you were further down the list?
In short: Good news if you're a B-rank engineer
Bad news if you're trying to diversify the industry
When employers are finding it difficult to hire because there aren't thousands more workers than there are positions to fill, that's good for employees
Want a job? Suddenly you're not being selected from one of 1500 applicants, and it's not a case where employers can put any old conditions on work because everyone is just desperate for any old work.
Now employees are the ones who can pick & choose.
There are more than, say 500 good engineers in the US (supposing Google and Yahoo hired 500 people). Sure, not many VPs of big dot-coms are easy to hire but would a startup be able to afford the salaries/perks they demand?
I don't think it's that much of an issue....
It kind of seems to me like they mentioned Yahoo for a lark in this article. The actually interesting and insightful section was about how people want to work at Google because--well, because they're Google-- but then they also sort of passingly mention "Oh, I guess people want to work at Yahoo too?"
Maybe they want to work there because they're competing against Google.
I remember in the old days before computers that you have to haul your butt down to library, search a card index, find the books, and look page-by-page for the information you're looking for. That required a bit of brain work to avoid wasting your time. It's a no brainer today to find what you're looking for on Google or Yahoo. Anyone who say that there's no brain drain going on haven't looked past their search bar in a while.
For Shame! This isn't America, you don't just get to do whatever you fucking want to do or anything. Oh wait, it is....
You can hire almost anyone and still create crap, just as Microsoft does.
Apple has good pull to get people, but even better management. There are tons of talented people - the whole superstar thing can be folly. It's about a culture that permits creativity and innovation.
When you've got people at Microsoft worrying about uttering the word podcast, you can see that they are losing their relevance by the moment. It has happened to many giant companies - as they phase from entrepreneurial and flexible - to arrogant and rigid.
IBM and HP both recently laid off 14,000 workers each. There should be plenty of brains out there, available for work.
The emigration of a large proportion of highly skilled and educated professionals...
The emigration of highly educated workers...
The migration of skilled workers out of a country...
depletion or loss of intellectual and technical personnel...
A "brain drain" is caused by the depleted organization. In all of these definitions the emphasis is on the loss of brains. Where they go and what they go on to do isn't specified. An oppresive communist regime could see its top intellectuals flee the country, and have those intellectuals go somewhere free and just live normal non-intellectual lives and it would be "brain drain". What's described in this story isn't so much about companies losing out on talent, "brain drain", rather it's about the companies gaining it, i.e. Google and Yahoo. Besides, brains aren't in limited supply. It's not like one's gain is another's loss. If anything this means that brains become more economically in demand.
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
If Google and Yahoo are doing the leading-edge research, and these top brains want to do this kind of research, and these companies are paying them top-dollars to do it, what's the problem? The article does mention that research at other companies are restricted (MS doesn't want researchers doing stuff that might impact their OS/Office sales, HP is doing less R&D)
If Google and Yahoo can attract the nerds, and you can't, that's your problem, isn't it?
Je ne parle pas francais.
Retranslate this as:
"Some companies bitch about some other companies who are paying more than they want to pay their own employees, employees leave, and outsourcing to India doesn't work that well. MBAs have to double their prozac dose to cope."
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it. --Henry Allen
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
Well, of course Google is getting all the good people in Silicon Valley. Who else is left? DEC SRL and WRL are gone, Interval is gone, PARC has been spun off and is looking for work, HP just canned their R&D operation, and SGI is in limbo.
If the bitching companies provided an equal work enviroment techs wouldn't be flocking in such massive droves to a company that treats them right. Even the simple things such as:
- Free high quality lunches instead of reducing lunch hours etc as many presently try to do.
- Gave something comprable to the 20% personal project time.
- Treated techs that "keep the $100'000 network thats critical to the business from screaming to a grinding halt" with respect at least equal to the tool with the MBA that just tossed 100 blue collars out on the street after 40 years so he could get his xmas bonus.
Who gives a shit. It isn't like anyone else is seriously hiring smart IT people right now, or like these people would have anything but a gnat's chance in hell of finding a place where they'd be appreciated in the current economic and intellectual climate if this yahoo/google thing weren't happening. Who the hell are google and yahoo supposedly brain-draining from? The unemployment lines? Oh no.
I don't because of the rampant unemployment in the tech sector... I do because mediocrity *is* is rampant in tech.
-M
hiring is difficult? boo fucking hoo. give me a job. the last thing i want to hear is that companies are having trouble hiring people.
Fast-forward to 2014.
Google the offers most popular network features, the OS, and the applications.
Every time something new comes along Google ties its version of that into its vast array of other services, and people gravitate towards it by default.
How is this different then Microsoft bundling IE?
Consider that others had map systems before Google. In the future, will Google get criticized for abuse when conglomerating new services into it's site?
I ask this because the line between application and website is getting blurred, and it seems to me that popular opinion on slashdot is that a monopoly should not bundle applications. How will we reconcile this in the future?
It's a good thing that its harder to find people. That means better pay, better benifits, and MORE RESEARCH in finding emploees and acctually know their stuff, Versus just hiring someone that with a peice of paper that says they know what they are doing. But in reality, they bought the degree from some website. They have to work harder, not a bad thing so they appriciate you more when you sign your life away.
Well if it isn't the leader of the wiener patrol, boning up on his nerd lesson...
As for start-ups, well, it seems just that tad unlikely that many start-ups could afford the former Vice President of Amazon.com. So it's hard for me to cry too hard.
The other important thing to consider is that most IT folk do their best work young and fresh out of college. They're not "old hands", they're "young minds". The real innovators are almost invariably people who haven't learned yet that what they're coding is impossible.
There ARE coders who know something is impossible, but code it anyway, but they are relatively rare. If a start-up wants the absolute best (and at rock-bottom prices), then it needs to go after the recently-graduated. Better yet, the start-up should find hot talent prior to University and sponsor them through it in exchange for part-time work during University and a contract at the end.
The reason youth is important is that old-hands tend to get stuck in a rut. They get used to doing things a particular way and loose the ability to step back and see what it is that is really going on. Look at any online resume of an experienced coder. Odds are, most such folk have a very few skills they have honed to perfection - with the consequence that they can do next to nothing with them.
Now, look at the people who are experienced but who are ALSO doing some damn good work. Odds are high that they'll have a much more diverse range of skills, are much less in some mould or other and likely have a more "Classical" background or education, where diversity rather than finesse was appreciated.
Also, America's work habits burn people out very quickly. No real vacation, no time to recharge, the ideal is to "produce" not learn and the Corporate Culture is king. It is doubtful America's high-tech industry can take much more of this kind of abuse. Something has to give.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The premise of this article is silly given the tiny number of openings filled by Google & Yahoo relative to the pool of engineering talent worldwide. Many great engineers never apply to either company, and those that do are likely to be overlooked due to imperfect filtering. Perhaps this "brain drain" story originated with the rumblings of some disgruntled manager at Microsoft. We all know google has a hardon for softies. Nonetheless, this article is ill-informed tripe.
It's just the free market economy at work. If someone else thinks Google and Yahoo are hiring too many of the best and brightest, then someone else needs to offer better pay, benefits, or working conditions.
So, there's demand in the market for talented people. This is a good thing. I'm a talented people. Most people here are talented.
And CS enrollment is declining too. And interest rates are low.
This is better than a bubble. Companies in the black are in a bidding war for us and the competition 5 years out is evaporating. Interest rates are still at "OMG if we hike it we die" levels.
Good times man, Good times.
I survived the last bubble and I'd have to say that the waters are chummed. Prepare yourselves for some forced coding marches and invest the spoils for the long haul.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Yeah, this goes in the same bucket with folks who say they only hire the top five percent. NEWS FLASH: everyone can't hire the top five percent. I'd say a good 99.9% of startups wouldn't know a good tech guy if he rewrote the Linux kernel as a Perl one-liner. This is just a scapegoat for the fact that they have no clue how to hire talented people.
No comment.
Supply and Demand.
Now the rest can more easily find a job, and if it's really a "brain drain", look forward to earning more. Some good news.
The IT field is full of idiots and charlatans. The days of the dot bombs are gone - just having a CS degree, or worse, a MIS or similar stupid psuedo-CS degree, is not enough to cut it.
Now days, companies are looking for competent people. That means you will often have to prove that you are what you say you are.
The hordes of people, on Slashdot even, who sit here and balk at having to take relatively simple CS proficency tests and claim that there are no jobs for CS at all are the ones who got their CS degrees without really learning anything or having any actual proficency in the first place. On the other hand, the real geeks are getting jobs left and right and companies want more people like them - they can't find enough! The only people who need to worry about outsourcing are those who don't make the cut.
This is the market at work. It is a great time as ever to go into CS. Its just that this time, you will not be able to slack off and make it. You're going to have to prove yourself.
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
I'd rather see tech companies compete for quality engineers again and offer increasing salaries, perks and interesting work to those who know what the heck they're doing.
Departure of a high-quality engineer hurts an org that needs to get things done A LOT. This means employers will be willing to pay more, because quality engineering is not something you can trust to a bunch of Indian dudes in Bangalore.
Is there really a lack of talent out there, or are companies just lazy to make an effort to find them? Or take a risk on someone green? From the article it seems like startups are just looking at who's heading existing companies in hopes of luring them away.
230 - what percentage is that again of the population of talent? And this is the best as measured by what? The fact that Google or whomever hires them? No, that isn't a good test: let's try something objective. Also, lets assume that a significant portion of those who are best won't start their own companies or research initiatives: an assumption that doesn't make sense. I mean WTF: this article is written not to inform but to acquire readers. I have an idea: www.criticalthinking.org.
Try that "reporters".
In addition to high-paying salaries and perks, Google/Yahoo/M$ also provide a better work environment. Since a startup can't beat these big shots with money, all it can do is to search hard for guys with enough motivation to join a startup and make his own mark.
Anyone who does't want his own talent product marked with "Google®" or "Microsoft®" should go for a start-up. That's all anyone can do about this brain-drain.
In India, M$ is paying a fresh graduate around Rs. 7,50,000 which is way higher than the average of Rs. 2,80,000. Not to say anything about extremely flexible work hours, relaxed/no dress-code etc etc. Now, which one would you chose? A start-up with no guarentee to see light in next decade or a high-paying software giant?
Unfortunately, it's with unskilled labor, takes 9 months to produce and over 20 years to even start being useful.
Some startups, for instance, say the talent drain has made their own hiring more difficult.
boo fucking hoo. If there's only 250 competant engineers in the US looking for work then there's a much bigger problem than a 'brain drain' between companies.
There was a time when companies actually trained people out of college. Actually, now that I think about it, there was a time when companies actually hired people out of college.
New engineering logo of america:
Build us a bomb, or live with your mom.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Hey guys, software engineering is not the most intellectually demanding thing (modern math, bioengineering, and like a hundred other things come first) on the planet. Yahoo and Google are hiring now and they'll fire later. Big deal.
Before Google and Yahoo, there was Microsoft Research or maybe PARC, DEC, SGI as the "hot place" to work in industry for Ph.Ds who didn't want to go into academia. Before THAT there was Bellcore, IBM Research, etc getting all the brains and publishing all the papers.
Empires rise and fall... I don't see anything usual about the hiring practices of Google or Yahoo snatching up the best talent.
Another player will come along in due time...
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
I still have a brain
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
They have a volunteer program for kids 5-14 who are unusually bright or gifted at something, called the NAGC. It's a good program, but it still doesn't go nearly far enough. Reading the story you linked to - wow. THAT is what a gifted program should be like, taking kids of any age to the limits of their brains. Ideally, that should be the norm for schools, getting people to reach their potential, through engaging them and their interests. Make learning a thing that's alive to the kids, not dead and nailed to the whiteboard below the eraser.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"Some startups, for instance, say the talent drain has made their own hiring more difficult."
Then how come all those startups keep rejecting my applications because I'm a senior software engineer and they want to hire cheap highschool dropouts, just to save money?
You are being suckered by the ever more imaginative PR gimmicks from the outsourcing lobby. Since they can't use any more the shortage of programmers to open some more the H1B and outsourcing gates, now some slickster has come up with a 'neat idea' to peddle "lack of smartest programmers" based on few hundred working for Google and Yahoo, and then got some Business Week hack to parrot it.
The top 500 (or top 1000 or top 10,000) will always be working for someone and by the talmudic logic of Mr. Ben Elgin, Mr. Robert Hof (in Silicon) Valley and Mr. Jay Greene (in Seattle), that "means" we have shortage and therefore, we must lay off another two hundred thousands of Americans replacing them with Indians. How 'bout shortage of newspaper hacks, based on the same "logic" and "data".
If the job is enticing enough monetatrily or challenge-wise, it will draw the best talent. Pure Darwinism at work. If you're a small operator and the project is interesting enough, it will draw talent. If your project is boring and stupid, it won't. Them's the breaks. Get over it.
Web hosting that doesn't suck!Dreamhost
about time smart folk were appretiated again!
"Yahoo hired dozens of top engineers, including Larry Tesler, former vice-president at Amazon.com."
Since when is a vice-president an engineer? Hiring away someone else's pointy-haired-boss does not create a "brain drain".
More evil from Google:
Google sued for firing executive pregnant with quadruplets
News.com is running the story Google hit with job discrimination lawsuit, which describes how
"Christina Elwell, who was promoted to national sales director in late 2003, alleges her supervisor began discriminating against her in May 2004, a month after informing him of her pregnancy and the medical complications she was encountering, according to the lawsuit filed July 17 in a U.S. District Court in New York."
In May 2004, after she became pregnant with quadruplets and during the same month that she lost two of the unborn children, her superior told her that her job as VP of national sales had been eliminated and requested that she take a job in Google's operations division, a position for which she had no experience. Google refused to allow her to take the lower position of East Coast regional sales director, instead firing her and hiring someone with no Internet sales experience.
In mid-June, another Google executive offered to place Christina in the operations job she had already rejected, while in the same email accused Christina's husband of "acting under false pretenses by telling Google that Elwell was having a health crisis".
After Google's director of HR confirmed that Christina had been terminated improperly, she accepted the lower ranking position offered, but then lost a third unborn child and within two days of returning to work on July 19, her doctors ordered her to cease her work because the stress that Google and her supervisor were putting her under created an even higher risk of losing her remaining unborn child.
After she returned from disability leave, rather than allow her to work in sales, Google fired her.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Since when is a vice-president an engineer? Hiring away someone else's pointy-haired-boss does not create a "brain drain".
Larry Tesler is about as far from a PHB as they get. He worked on the Xerox GUI machines back in the glory days of PARC. Then he worked as Cheif Scientist at Apple for almost two decades. The dude ported most of the Newton code to DYLAN during his 6 week sabatical. More recently he was involved with some Smalltalk based early childhood GUI "programming language". Stagecast software I think it was called. I didn't realize he ended up at Amazon for awhile.
With thousands of qualified and professional software engineers floating around the industry, the only issue may be finding an engineer who has established themselves with the industry with recognition to boot. There is no short supply, that's nonsense. If your startup has difficulty hiring because of this popularity drain, then it's time to look in greener pastures.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
Yahoo hired Prabhakar Raghavan today, who is a very well known person in the area of randomized algorithms and information retrieval.
Seriously, there was once a day that I used their search engine. Long ago, in the days when people actually thought about which search engine to use.
There was once a day when I got email from yahoo accounts. Long ago, in the days that my university's spam filter permitted incoming messages containing the word "yahoo".
"The Japanese car companies are better run companies (and better to work for) than Detroit."
What you're saying might be true, but lets look at a couple of counter examples.
Mazda is owned by ford after they continually had done poorly in the mark.
Nissan was struggling until they hired, I believe, a Frenchman to run the company.
Mitsubishi is in miserable shape, having 3 CEO's in about 3 years. I wouldn't be shocked to see them out of the car industry in a few years.
Now, clearly, some Japanese car companies do well. Honda, Toyota, and Subaru. But the rest are also rans with pretty mediocre products overall.
Is that any better than the rest of the car industry in the rest of the world? I don't see the Japanese as inherently superior at building cars, but perhaps my view is a parochial one.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I doubt that you will ever find me working for the #1 company in a field, whether it be Google, Microsoft, or whoever. Almost anybody can help keep the company at the top on top, it's a matter of inertia. The real gems are those who can raise a company from the bottom to the top.
Admittedly, it's a lot easier going to a well-organized company that is on the top for a reason. But, what's the point? Work hard and be the next guy at the top.
See you there!
Damn -- I have no mod points...
"The problem is not coming up with good ideas, but getting the political and financial resources to develop them."
Very true -- good ideas are a dime a dozen. Persuading a group of smart and skeptical people to fund 6 or 7 figures of development budget is harder. Harder still is seeing your idea through implementation to delivering a real revenue generating product. Always remember that the default outcome for software projects is failure. And you have to fight that tendency every day.
Ian Ameline
"It means that that company cannot field an interviewer who they can rely on to gauge the technial ability of a candidate."
[I'm posting this anonymously because the Internet is forever, and I work for a large company and routinely interview lots of technical people. I'm on the verge of hot water now, and I don't need to give those people ammunition.]
I agree with this, and yet HR departments live in mortal fear of an "unfair interview". That is, they feel everyone must be asked the same questions. So I'm supposed to submit a list of questions and then ask each of the interviewees the same questions and then grade each on the basis of those questions. Sounds equitable. Who can argue with that.
And yet, people are as unique as snowflakes, and skillsets may look good on paper, but don't stand up to anyone who can ask 2-3 questions about a topic.
I'm not a genius, and yet in 10 minutes I can tell if you're any good. You see, a technical person has passions that they bring to their work and to me the interview process is about uncovering your technical passions and then talking about them. That's when you can tell if the person is BS or not.
So if I can't bring out your passion or you can't articulate your passion, I may miss out on some people, but that's okay. I'm not sure I want people without passion for what they do, nor do I want someone who can't communicate. Its not all about the smartest guys, its all about somebody who can do work and get things done. I'm agreeing with you, but from the other side of the desk, and its not always the manager's fault that these inane tests are given. They're absolute rubbish.
Incidentally, I'm routinely in trouble with HR. They get all pissed off when I tell them the first two questions I ask are "what is your religion" and "who did you vote for in the last election" (just a note to the humorless, I don't really ask those questions). HR is concerned about interviewing hundreds of line workers, not about programmers, and they want absolute conformity. So their questions end up in the trash can and I make up "scores" to make them happy.
So there are only 500 good systems guys in the US?
/. everyday. More idiot discussions of kids japanese cartoon, and more self-promoting book reviews. I think you guys need a little tighter editorial policy. Your "Stuff that really matters" philosophy is getting lost in the noise.
Bullshit! The author is just looking for a controversial premise to sell an article to BW. There are a HUGE number of top drawer tech guys in the US. This is ludicrous.
Another thing... there seem to be more and more sensationalistic stories like this on
Unfortunately, speaking from experience, when companies layoff people on the magnitude of IBM or HP, they do it by project/product. I was laid off from a position about 4 years ago and our whole division was canned. Alot of very very smart people were let go and it amazed me that the company showed no interest in keeping the top talent.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
So let me get this straight... since the early 90's, companies in the U.S. began ousourcing jobs to almost anywhere that they could get a third world streetwhore to type "Hello World" for 15 cents a day:
- Hooker got paid
- MegaCorp saved tons of ching and Downsized (tm)
- Grads said "fuck I.T." I'm going into Management.
- Decade later MegaCorps can't find employees to go around.
Seems like perfect "causality" to me. WTF were they expecting?
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Any startups suffering can always hire me :).
My sig is as boring as you...
Oh come on... how many startups are going to have Kai Fu Lee applying for their jobs? And how much of a dent in the industry is the loss of 230 people (perhaps x2 if Yahoo hired the same number) really going to make? There are awesomely good programmers everywhere.
Yahoo and Google are a verry small slice of the total tech employee pie. If there's a tech talent pinch, it's more likely due to larger phenomena, such as the demographic shift caused by all those creaky baby boomers starting to take early retirement. Early predictions were we'd start seeing spot shortages in tech specialty areas in 2005, with full-on, oh-my-god-its-worse-than-1999 shortage starting 2008. By the numbers, the late 1990s saw an estimated 4.7 million shortage of skilled workers, and by 2010, it is estimated we'll be short around 20 million. That oughta beef up signing bonusus ("No Mel, ABCorp is offering a 3000-foot condo on Maui. If CDcorp won't pitch in a Ferrari, I'm taking my VB skills to ABCorp.")
It needs some tweaking as it let your post through....
Yea right, there are millions engineers out there and only a few thousand are worth something?
;-)
Give me a break.
Human Resources people can't tell their right from their left with some of their stupid tests (I don't blame them, they have to make a living too
What have these so 'hot' software engineers done for the world? Have they created a new software development method that minimizes flaws and bugs? have they created some new programming language that allows for bug-free programming? have they created a new "internet" O/S that is also a database and solves the problem of data access and replication? Have they created a new compiler that incorporates all the latest programming language developments? Have they developed a truly innovative library for programming the web that does away with the millions of little domain-specific-languages that dominate web-based software development?
The answer to the above is a clear 'no'. This is not a trolling post, and not a flamebait post. I just want to point out that there is a great misunderstanding on what is a great software engineer: a truly great software engineer is the one that creates a new programming abstraction that solves elegantly a class of previously difficult-to-solve problems; a great software engineer is not the one that knows 100% of the details of a problematic implementation and toolset.
The above-described definition is very important, because true progress comes from people that are pioneers in discovering/making new paradigms, not from people that are the best in using current tools. Anyone can learn all the tools of the world, but if they are not capable of making suggestions on how to improve the tools, then they are clearly not great: having clear ideas on what is wrong with current tools and improving them (including the introduction of new programming languages!) is what makes someone a truly great software engineer.
The people that Google hires may be the greatest users of current technology, but what good has come out of Google? have we got a new revolutionary method that makes web programming a breeze? have we solved the various problems that plug web-app development? do we still need to go through multiple layers of XML and HTML in order to create the slightest web application?
I disagree.
I might give you "reduces the risk," but have to wholeheartedly disagree on "eliminates the risk."
Just like any engineering school, MIT has its "average engineers."
MIT has prestige, yes, but having visited there (and once toyed with the idea of going there) and having partnered with people from MIT on research projects, I can say that my impressions were that yes, they have some very hot shot people, and part of their strength is the availability of funding to buy research equipment; however, just like any school, they have their average engineers. They do have some awesome research projects which make for impressive resumes, but the lack of presence of these on the resumes of other students results from the fact that many other schools simply do not have the same funding. All this affords the MIT students is greater exposure (albeit usually less than a year) to very specific research projects, things that most engineers with the fundamentals (which are taught everywhere, and is up to the student to understand and retain) can pick up on a job in no time at all. Sometimes, but not always, this even affords the "outsider" an advantage because they often have to work under budget constraints (a real world problem) and engineer their solutions, as opposed to buy them. In the case of software, you don't deal with the same concerns as an engineer in optics whose average piece of equipment runs $100k USD, so a lot of people outside the MIT world have the same programming and development fundamentals as someone on the "inside," or at least close to the same.
Consider the recruiting side of this. MIT doesn't magically draw in super people. Both good and bad people, as well as good people who look bad and bad people who look impressive, want to get into MIT. All MIT has to go on is high school performance before they pull people in for their undergraduate program. Well, who here had an impressive high school transcript? *raises hand*
Did MIT send me an application packet? Absolutely.
Did I fill it out? No.
Did people who skimmed through high school because they could memorize things and make As on everything apply and get accepted? You bet.
One thing that people need to understand is that As in high school (and I am not some bitter individual trying to feel better by putting down A students--I was an A student who took almost every AP course I could) often mean that the student was good at memorizing the material (which is king in most--but not all--high schools). Well, that is unrelated to engineering. If a person wants to memorize their way through engineering, then they are simply being trained to be glorified technicians. Engineers are paid to think, not regurgitate information that one can easily look up in Google (har!)
You do have your MIT students who coast through school and put in the minimum amount necessary, some of them even banking on the prestige of their school to get them through. Well, you will notice that the tides of industry are changing; people are becoming wise to this, having hoped to "eliminate the risk" before only to be burned or more impressed with someone from a podunk school. They realize that MIT hires professors who often...didn't graduate from MIT. Other schools hire professors from the same schools as do MIT. There is no magic here. Yes, good professors often navigate toward these larger schools because the pay is better, but MIT is not so huge that they can hire them all. You find equally qualified engineering professors ending up in smaller schools (which actually afford the students more one-on-one time), and you often find these professors actually teaching the courses, as opposed to a student teaching assistant. Ask some MIT students, and I will guarantee you that not all of them will sing the praises of their professors, and in some cases they will tell you that they learned on their own because the class was taken over by some grad student so their professor could go toy around in the la
I for one know that my company can't find and hire good people fast enough. Some days it seems they just aren't out there to be hired. I was wondering if we should blame the schools for not turning out the right kind of people fast enough, but perhaps we should blame competitive hiring. Maybe I should take a better look into what they're all going for...
On previous epiodes of job hunting, I've been offered "aptitude tests" at the interview. The kind of thing I'm talking about is where the HR person gives you a printed sheet of C++ exercises. I find those a real turn-off. It means that that company cannot field an interviewer who they can rely on to gauge the technial ability of a candidate. Those question sheets also invariably contain errors. In fact every time this has happened I have done the test anyway, been offered the job, and turned it down.
Dude, they aren't doing it because they can't possibly find a single person who can ask a single technical question. They're doing it because companies are innundated with people looking for technical jobs who have absolutely zero idea what they're talking about, and they have to have some kind of filter to keep their engineers from spending all day interviewing idiots.
As you've pointed out, you had no difficulty doing their tests -- but a number of people would be filtered out there.
Now, if that is the *only* interview content, I agree that this would be overkill, but it seems reasonable for the first phase of the interview process.
I mean, you have no idea how goddamn ignorant many of the people applying for jobs are. I remember sitting in a room where an informal interview was being done. Some guy (suit, slicked-back hair, impressive resume, etc) had described himself as an "expert C programmer" (for some reason, every person, no matter their actual experience, is determined to describe themselves as "expert" in at least a couple things -- while this might happen occasionally, the engineer interviewing you is not that stupid). He was asked to write a strcpy() implementation. After something like five minutes of him nervously doodling (he needed to be told what strcpy() was, which didn't look like a good sign), the interviewer started asking him a couple questions. The guy had some sort of confused concept of a string -- he seemed to recall that strings were copied with a member function, seemed to have a fuzzy idea what a Java string was, and then started talking about LDAP (he must have using a string in something database-related in the past). The interviewer tried prompting him, giving him hints, tried asking some other C questions. It was embarassing. And if you have a bunch of your engineers lined up to interview this guy, to try to get some feel of what he can do, you've just blown a man-day completely. You have to have some kind of a filter. So, yes, a set of preprinted questions may not exactly challenge your technical wizardry, but it's cheap in terms of man-hours to apply. If those are the only questions you're being asked, then you might be right -- you might not want to work there. You shouldn't just pass on a job, though, because you have to pass a basic filter.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
And where did you hear that Microsoft worries about people talking about podcasting? You obviously haven't read http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/07/ 18/439940.aspx
These are just the market forces. The same ones that created brain drain in other countries when the young, able, and smart left their homes to accept scholarships in U.S. colleges and universities, work on their PhDs in MITs, Caltechs, and Stanfords. This is the natural course of events and should be left alone. In the end the universe will remain in the balance. If you don't trust me, ask Yoda.
Simpy
Most "Japanese" cars sold in the USA are made in North America by North Americans. More and more they are designed by Americans.
I sincerely hope that Americans do not get to design more cars. Chris Bangle has made a mess of the BMW designs (compare the old 5 and 7 series with the new ones). In fact, there is a petition to fire him which you might want to hop over and sign. The good news is that the value of the pre-Bangle BMWs must have increased greatly in the pre-owned market.
Google tries to patent Web syndication ads
Google is claiming that it has invented a unique way to distribute online advertising via syndicated news feeds--and it wants a patent for the technology.
If granted, the patent would presumably give Google the exclusive rights for "incorporating targeted ads into information in a syndicated, e.g., RSS, presentation format in an automated manner," according to its patent application titled, "Embedding advertisements in syndicated content." ...
Google, Yahoo and a number of start-ups are eyeing syndication as a new outlet for delivering online ads. If Google is granted the patent, it could be a big blow to its rivals in the field, said Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li.
"It would really stifle competition," Li said. "It would be a pretty powerful patent to have."
(read more on CNET)
They're probably trying to move all the Indian IT workers here before Pakistan and India start a nuclear war.
If Pakistan nuked Bangalore then IT wages in the U.S. would skyrocket to unseen heights. That is, if the Indians weren't all brought here first.
Some companies come around and create better working conditions with more opportunities, conditions which recognize and honour the talents that these workers have spent years honing.
Well, I guess these other companies which are being 'drained' (a pejorative meaning they can't compete to attract workers) will just have to improve their working conditions.
They can cry me a river until they do.
I disagree. I worship Google. I was offered a job at Google.
I am not working at Google.
Sometimes in life you have to make choices, and I do not regret mine. For it, I am working somewhere really, really cool, am making more money doing so.
I could have been one of many. To put this in geeky terms...in the realm of the borg, do you think that 7 of 9 was really all that special?
Sure, they make for a great collection of many, many great people, and that makes them very powerful, but why not work some place that has the means to manifest great ideas, but where your voice isn't lost in the static?
Well, the question is how big the gap actually is, irrespective of who has a PhD and who doesn't. Here's one recent take on it -- Hitting the High Notes appearing on Joel on Software.
Having done quite a bit of programming language training for large companies, I've concluded there are some really great developers out there mixed with a lot of mediocre talent. Interestingly, some of the best small groups of programmers I've encountered work for the federal and state governments, defying the conventional wisdom.
You know, a really good low-level manager really *is* worth the amount of money he's paid, if not more -- the problem is that many low-level managers are *not* really good and are paid as if they are.
* If you can enthuse your team as to what they're doing, that's a point. Enthusiastic people produce much better output than uninterested people. That's different from just enjoying the job -- having a jacuzzi in the office may make the job more enjoyable, but it doesn't necessarily make people enthusiastic about what they're doing.
* If you can pick up on what people's various triggers are, and adapt to them, that's a point. Some people like being presented with competitive environments, some people feel overwhelmed by them. Some people hate being told what to do -- it may be better to "guide" these people, ask them the same problems that you're trying to solve and let them come to the same conclusions you've reached, and other people feel more comfortable if they have clear instruction. Some people don't get work done without a clear schedule, and other people can't stand not having flexibility. Some people work best in serial -- one task at a time -- other people prefer being able to switch around between tasks. A good manager is going to be able to treat different employees differently, each as a different tool he can use to solve a problem, rather than try to force everyone to follow a particular mold.
High-level execs get a lot of flack on Slashdot. I haven't had to interact with these folks much, so I'm not really informed enough to make too much of a judgement. But consider, for a moment, what their role is (and ask yourself whether there is skill involved in it).
When an engineer is working on a problem, he usually gets to work on something that he's had the ability to specialize fairly much around. If someone, say, a vendor, starts feeding him technical bullshit, it's easier for him to figure out that something is up, because he's got a good deal of knowledge in the field. He has to know his field *intimately*, and there is generally little room for error -- if you're wrong about something from a technical standpoint, you are *wrong*. On the other hand, he does have some advantages. The things he's working with are fairly straightforward -- complex, perhaps, but they do something, are intended to do something, and if they aren't, something is wrong. It might be material used in a bridge or chips in a product, but this pretty much holds. He generally has tools that can let him get accurate information about any problems -- it may consume time to do so, or even be somewhat difficult, but if he wants to he can probably diagnose problems to a high degree of accuracy.
An exec has to run organizations that deal with things that he does not have the luxury of specializing in. He *knows* that he doesn't know the details of what he's working with, so he's essentially blind-fighting a bit. A vendor *can* sell him a line of bullshit on technical matters, because he hasn't had the time to specialize in a field. The things he's working with are usually groups of people that have all sorts of agendas, and frequently are not giving him accurate information -- how much funding they *really* could get by with, whether they really believe that they can still finish their project, people who are busy passing the buck and so forth. If he wants to have an engineer review a vendor's claims, he doesn't know whether or not the engineer may be claiming more knowledge than he really has, or may have bias, or whatnot. So he lacks the precision diagnostic tools of the engineer, and has no hard guarantee of being able to obtain accurate information. The upside of being an exec is that mistakes may lead to softer failures than technical mistakes -- you can do something "sort of right" and still have it work quite well, and not have anyone really be able to easily call you out on it. Someone who's really good at handling these tools and working within this kind of system *can* be really v
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
....Seriously, all the google money is helping fuel the housing bubble around here. The google employees are bidding up the cost of housing in upscale Peninsula suburbs.
If you work for google, you can WAY better terms on a home-loan, than if you worked for say, IBM or HP.
I do not report my GPA on my resume anymore.
I didn't for jobs, for internships, for research positions...
To me, my 4.0 should give little bearing as to my ability to perform. Besides, in five years, that number will be useless to them anyway, and they will no longer care about GPAs and will want to see the body of my work. If they are going to judge me by the fact that I memorized material in the classroom and yawned my way through with a 4.0, then odds are they are not going to place me in an appropriate mutually-beneficial position in their company, and will just put me in places where "a 4.0 should go." My real work, my real challenges...those were in the research lab, in my jobs, and in my internships. That is where they can tell if I work hard, if I can lead a team, if I can document my work, and if I can operate under a budget. Sure I can get an easy position at most places based on the sound of my degrees and the "purity" of my GPA, but I didn't have any trouble finding work without listing that GPA, either.
I was once applying to a defense contractor who, in their email to all of the applicants, gave a list of ideas of what they would like to see on a resume. The GPA was one of them. I instead decided to leave it off, and instead put my most impressive work near the top of the resume, bolding the impressive-sounding titles, and giving a brief explanation of what each was despite the fact that I knew that explanation might not be read. He began skimming, and some of those bolds caught his eye, and so he read the descriptions of only those things in which he was interested. He was so impressed that he forgot about the GPA entirely--didn't even ask me what it was.
I was hired.
That might not work for everyone, as there are bean counters out there who have a strict criteria for which they are looking. However, if you find that it sincerely bothers you, and you want your research noticed, you might try omitting that GPA. Make them read the research (tailor your resume to the job and put the relevant research near the top. If that puts it out of date order, then just don't list dates) and then, if they still want to know your GPA and ask about it (in the interview setting, of course), your saying "4.0" will be your icing on the cake.
The trick is to make the research the cake and the GPA its icing, not the other way around.
OTOH we do tend to overwhelm people: someone suggests the seed of an idea and we run off with it, going places they would never reach. Usually we're quite alone in our thoughts: no one else can keep up.
I guess it's just as well: working at Google would probably be like thinking in molasses. So it's back to particle physics and string theory for me!8-))
If all it takes to do great things is to be 'passionately curious', then it should be possible for a great many people to change the world.
But I don't want to move to work for the big guys because of personal reasons. If the startups and big companies still want to hire really smart people perhaps they should consider hiring people without requiring them to work in their head office.
I've spent the last few days doing some very important searching - we're thinking about launching a new product in a rather arcane field, and I want to be absolutely certain who the potential competition might be - hence I decided to search both Google & Yahoo!.
Guess what? Yahoo! search beats Google search, hands down. Not even close.
Two thoughts:
I'm seeing this written in various ways in the comments here, but let me summarize - this is pure FUD, and is one of the stupidest - and most offensive - postings I have seen on Slashdot in some time. At least we seem to realize it... Why don't we Americans simply give away one of the best new industries we've ever created? CS enrollees dropping in number, 'not enough good engineers' when plenty of good engineers are un- or under-employed; crap, pure and simple. The management doesn't like our ability to demand more.
Sorry about the rant - I just feel like we're flushing our futures down the toilet in pursuit of a (temporary) accumulation of $$$s.
If there really is a "brain drain" on the rest of the industry. It should send a message to the rest of the industry that in order to compete they need to create work environments similar to the environments at Google and Yahoo.
------------
http://ccc.1asphost.com/codeworm
These people are just as likely to come up with the Next Big Thing (tm) as the MIT PhD's are
Companies like graduates from certain schools because those people are not just trained to be good programmers, but to think beyond what they were taught. You don't have to have attended such a school in order to have those skills, but if you didn't, you'll have to establish to your potential employer that you know what it takes some other way.
And my impression is that you don't actually know what it takes. You imply that being a "talented engineer" is enough. You're right that there are plenty of talented engineers and coders, and it is not enough.
Summary: Search is what google does, data is what they are collecting, picking winners will never be perfected.
I belive there is a difference between the person who discovered, say the shell sort algorithim, and the many others who have used it as part of less general algorithims (ie: an application). To me it is like the distinction between pure and applied math.
To be good at one of the branches does not automatically mean you are good at the other. There seems to be less pure programmers than there are applied, but the rarest beastie is one that excells at both.
Having a string of letters behind your name is no gaurentee that you are any good at anything other than studying and getting published in obscure journals, OTOH: In some cases years of experience amount to squat because the industry has moved faster than thier specialised corner of it. A genius scale concept can pop up in almost anyone, anywhere at anytime, but to be able to recognise the value or even the novelty of an algorithim, say efficient error correction, you need at least some formal trainning in maths and science. This is not my personal bias, large bussiness and institutions demand a related degree or substantial experience (preferably both), some will mix in a few biolgist and other completely unrelated degrees. The ones that land in the guts of a large research or development project are almost exclusively BSc's or higher and often the token biologist is also a competent programmer.
If google is able to recognise the best people in all 4 possible categories of pure and applied programers then it should be a snap for a company built on search algorithims to interview as many people as they can and keep skiming the cream via natural turnover. From personal experience at interviewing I know it is hard to judge someones potential when they are obviously competent and experienced, but each interview is also an opportunity to refine your selection and interview techniques by tracking who goes where and contributes what. Theoretically the more you interview the better you should become at picking winners, but as they say, "everything works perfectly in the theory department".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Actually neither Google nor Yahoo pay well at all, comparably. You'll make twice as much as a contractor. People go to Google for the growth potential and possibly the stock. I'm not sure why people go to Yahoo, maybe they are maschochistic and like getting their ass kicked by Google? Yahoo has a good reputation in the Valley, but seems to be staffed mostly with second raters these days.
I have friends that work in both companies, I know what the payscales are. Yahoo you are generally looking at less then 120K as a senior engineer (all compensation included), you have to be an exec (Director or higher) to do well. Google is less.
Google does indeed discriminate based on degree, they have a reputation for it at least. Want to work at Google, get a degree from Stanford. Yahoo is really more like an old boys club, people hire their friends, or other people that think very similiarly to them.
Personally I don't think either one of those companies does well as far as hiring goes. I've known plenty of great people who didn't get callbacks. I've seen them both hire some real crap.
Hiring is really hard in general though, you simply don't have enough information based on resume and a couple hours of interviewing. Word of mouth and reputation is often the best way to go, not complex inteligience tests or acedemic performance..
It kind of seems to me like they mentioned Yahoo for a lark in this article.
Actually, I'd bet you dollars to donuts that this article was "seeded" by a PR firm in the employ of Yahoo. Their goal: create the impression that Yahoo is second only to Google as a search engine and an employer of Smart People. Make Yahoo seem cool like Google is. For example, the sentence "Yahoo also carries substantial geek cred."
Paul Graham unveils this concept in great detail in his essay The Submarine.
Notice the number of quotes from Yahoo employees vs. the number from Google employees, the insider information about Yahoo's future plans vs. the use of facts you already knew about Google anyway.
Bet.
Graham "Teach" Mitchell, computer science teacher, Leander HS
Take a look at their job openings page. There exist many positions which say "BS|MS or equivalent". While a really good educational background is desireable, I can tell you from personal experience that Google primarily values what you can do over where you went to school.
If you're really super bright, but have no degree (or a non-CS degree, or a degree from a crappy school) you can get a job at Google. Further, there is far less bias against non-degreed individuals at Google than at many other places I've seen. Engineers are primarily judged on what they know vs. where they learned it.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
FROM INSIDE ONE OF THE TWO FIRMS MENTIONED: our company is bringing in people externally for anything interesting, thus alienating old-timers, those with experience, those who actually built the place. At our current rate you will likely find many of us looking for new work. Newsflash for all you new geniuses we hired recently - 95% of this business is OPS, not research, and search is more or less a solved problem at this point, and you will find that these companies will soon again revert to making money.
Worldwide online brand advertising is expected to grow 21 percent this year from $11.3 billion to $18.2 billion, according to Goldman Sachs.
Ahem.
agreed--this article reeks of PR...
So they'll have to cultivate, train and develop new techs. Gee that's awful for techs and the world in general.
Somehow...?
You find equally qualified engineering professors ending up in smaller schools (which actually afford the students more one-on-one time), and you often find these professors actually teaching the courses, as opposed to a student teaching assistant.
Reminds me of one of my favorite professors. After he graduated from, I'm thinking as I don't recall for sure, Notre Dame with PhDs in Mathematics and Physics he jointed the Peace Corp and was spent to a university in Ghana to teach. When he came back though he was offered some positions with companies as well as major universities he took a position at the community college I went to because he wanted to teach. When I took calc with him, there were three professors who taught calc, his students had this saying that if you got a C from him then you would of gotten a B from the second professor and an A from the third. Though his classes were tough and he graded hard he helped students any way he could and if you did good then you knew the material inside out. He said he didn't want to teach how to memorize tables but instead how to solve a problem.
FalconShould there be a Law?
You will soon see many old-time experienced Yahooers and Googlers looking for new interesting work...these firms have both brought in so many new people that it is becoming impossible to make a contribution unless you are Joe Phd brought in from the outside no earlier than 2004. I have no clue why someone would want to join Yahoo or Google now - endless backstabbing, redtape, egos...basically everything you want to avoid at work. And both stocks are falling, so don't get a boner over getting rich.
What I DO see is a LOT of positions being filled by H1 and L1 visa holders. The L1's have really seemed to pick up this year; it seems like H1-B visas are for suckers.
It's probably because of the lower cap on H1's this year. But it really surprised me how quickly a company like Wipro can fill a position via a L1 holder. I saw one guy litterally get hired on a Saturday; and on Monday was here on site.
I suppose it's because L1's have no limit on them, and it's so easy to bend the rules with them, as there's even less checking here than with H1's (not that there's any real checking of corporate compliance anywhere).
I feel really bad for the college kids. These jobs ought to be going to them. But instead, I see a lot of visa holders taking their place, and getting the training instead.
Don't know why this was modded down.
Oh yes I do. Because it is true and sometimes people hate being confronted with truth.
Offtopic? Come on, mod-trolls.
Maybe they want to work there because they're competing against Google...but then they also sort of passingly mention "Oh, I guess people want to work at Yahoo too?"
If someone's working for Google then indirectly they are working for Yahoo! as well seeing as how Yahoo! was one of the first investers in Google, investing in Google before the IPO.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Do no evil my ass. Motherfuckers.
When you've got people at Microsoft worrying about uttering the word podcast, you can see that they are losing their relevance by the moment. It has happened to many giant companies - as they phase from entrepreneurial and flexible - to arrogant and rigid.
Sounds just like HP!
fALCONShould there be a Law?
I hate when the modders bring people down for speaking the truth.
All these 'brains' get scooped up by a few 'giants' spend a few years incubating in those environments and then will leave to explore other options, bringing with them new vibrant ideas and state-of-the-art skills that will invigorate start ups and other stagnating businesses.
Right now just isn't a good environment to begin a start up. People just need to learn the nature of business cycles.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Microsoft Word? Microsoft Outlook? Microsoft Excel? These things are the staples of many businesses operations, so looking beyond the geek perspective and Microsoft tail chasing, I cannot really understand how these things are poor in quality and much worse than their competitors.
Most, all of the problems I've had with Microsoft software are all problems with Windows. I've had and/or used Windows from 3.X to XP and the only one I didn't have any serious problem with is Windows NT. As for MS Office, while I haven't used Outlook (other than express though I've used Eudora the past few years), Presentation, or Access I've never had a problem with Word or Excell.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Apple has good pull to get people, but even better management.
Apple has good developers, excellent management, and excellent marketing, but they aren't innovators.
It's about a culture that permits creativity and innovation.
True, and there are few companies that still do. Google is one of the few.
Google snapped up about 230 engineers last quarter.
Still forthcoming is their plan for justifying these huge costs when they
It sounds like they're just sitting engineers down and paying them with money they raised in the IPO to develop their wild ideas, then releasing them (with a "BETA!" stamp) to inflate their stock price.
They're like the entire dot-com bubble confined to a single company.
Glad those days are back.
"Waaaaah! Google are paying people more than we want to! Somebody stop them!"
- the cost of people has gone up and the managers don't like it
Boo f'n hoo
Sincerely,
Trollbait (sweet!)
how many software engineers does it take Microsoft to make a billion dollars?.
If my guess is right, you think Microsoft makes all those dimes and chimes because of the godly Chief Engineer, Bill Gates. WRONG.
Its the software Engineers at MS and they ALL deserve equal rights to the MS LOOT as Gates.
Curtains |||||
enters Yahoo and Google.
Now, where do we start with the likes of these two in the quest to underpay Joe, overpay CEO and twist the investor arse.
Yea, once google hires the 200-300 people who are smart, the rest of the industry might as well call it quits.
Cause no one but the smartest people can come up with email and map programs in javascript. And you might as well give up now if you had ever hoped to figure out how to write search engines... all the distributed architecture junk and search trees and caching and crawling...its enough to make us simpletons completely unemployable.
Give me a break. No one has a monopoly on genius. If you think you do, think again. People are graduating every day and some 10% of them have what it takes to think outside the box google is making.
Advertising
Look at how MS does coop advertising. Remember Windows 98's most obvious feature, 'push' ads that turned your desktop into an ad for Disney and whoever else? MS only abandoned the idea after it was laughed at. Microsoft is like Yahoo: crass and lame.
Google's ads, which are everywhere in their products, are by design subtle, useful and relevant to the information you are searching. Google is like Apple: classy and sharp.
User Interface
Microsoft creates Wizards that put you on a dummy stool and start reading you a boring script (next) asking you to push obvious buttons (next) and step through (next) several (next) pages of blah blah (next) to get anything done (finish). Other interfaces are cluttered but simplistic. Yahoo!
Google's products attempt to be obvious and simple enough to figure out without reading a manual. Apple!
Business Style
Microsoft attempts to poison innovations to prevent them from threatening their control of markets. They pollute standards to make everything proprietary, buy technologies to catch up, and after dominating an industry, they leave it to rot rather than continue to cultivate innovation (web browsers). Microsoft attempts to get money out of everything they do, charging for the client, the server and the client accessing the server. Yahoo!
Google presents innovations as future products, even when it is not clear how they will profit. They employ open standards and encourage interoperability. They provide free public services. Apple!
History
Microsoft sprang from being a software middle man. Their value comes more from marketing than technology. They make vaporous promises that kill competition and innovation. Yahoo?
Google sprang from a technology implementation. Their value comes from finding ways to profit from new technologies. They introduce products the market puts to use and that competitors copy. Apple.
Google wears the white hat of the new Apple.
Microsoft wears the black hat of Yahoo.
Microsoft isn't lame and evil because they are big, but because they are lame and evil. Some big monopolies are benevolent (Ma Bell?) and plenty of small underdog companies are evil.
- They're now big companies. Ugh.
- If you do come up with something big, how will they reward you? Both have Jumped The Shark when it comes to equity compensation; so all you'll get is beer money for your multibillion dollar invention.
- Both have bad reps for work/life balance, which usually kills the frequency of innovation.
Why are so many "brilliant people" willing to work for peanuts? Answer: They're not as brilliant as Google/Yahoo's PR people make them out to be. The really brilliant folk are still out there taking risks, starting companies and solving real world problems, not those of other geeks.Google and Yahoo are hiring. It means there are jobs in the industry, because someone will have to fill the positions vacated by those hired by Google and other someones would join the startups teams. What does Slashdot do - complain, calling it "brain drain".
Come on, think about it for a split second before you blame the corporations or cry out how bad it is that some people got new jobs.
Startup and other companies should stop bitching about talent drain. The average IT doesn't invest in Quality but in Quantity. They are not willing to pay a lot, often peanuts, and often they will get monkeys! The industry must understand that quality is more valuable than quantity, and outsourcing to India or Poland won't do the trick!
Start to pay decent salary to people like me, with 10 years of experience... and than you may see good results!
Just my 2 angry cents...
.NET is the most brilliant programming framework out there. Stop politics, start programming!
Compared to the Beige Box industry, Apple is an innovator.
HTML isn't hard to learn. If your friend couldn't learn it quickly, then I think that reflects on your friend.
You're right html isn't hard, xml is getting there though. As for the person I mentioned, he wasn't my friend, just someone I met.
Now, design is another thing completely. That takes a skill that is not wholly scientific.
Yeap! Design is different, and there's two basic way to get there though related, graphic design and print. I knew one person who was a graphic artist who started designing graphics for the web on her own and another one who was a commercial artist who started her own web design business. She'd do the design work for a website and would pay people working freelance for any programming needed. There's something I don't understand about web design and programming in the US, accessibility isn't stress much. For the classes I took for my web programming degree all we really did was valid the code and run a webpage through Bobby neither of which does much of a job of testing for accessibility. Sure, Bobby checks for things like alt attributes for images but it takes a person to test and check layout, colour, and other areas of accessibility. We didn't do any of these, however chatting with people in Canada and Britian who were in college working on a degree or updating their skills said their education stressed accessibility. And they did at least a little of both design and programming, her design and programming are totally separate.
Falcon
Oops, I just visited Bobby, er Cast.org and Bobby wasn't there. A similar service is at Watchfire.
Should there be a Law?
In the 80s the young MicroSoft was vibrant face of future computing. IBM was a bunch of stuffy suits.
The wheel has turned again, putting MicroSoft in IBMs position and Google as the upstart. And it will probably change again.
What are you talking about? Apple takes innovations from other companies and repackages them; that's what they have always done. Most of their successful products come from the Beige Box industry.
If there is a serious _Bran Drain_ then all those folks in Google are the most intelligent programmers in the whole world then the rest are all retards. Corrollary: If all the programmers on earth are retards except the ones in google then google cannot grow or their growth will be negligible. If you say you don't have to constantly hire intelligent people to grow then google has to stop hiring at some point, when is that ? I don't hear of anybody leaving Google
I feel having too many intelligent programmers need not necessarily be the best setup. At some point Google will crash and you can see the reverse Brain Drain. All grades of programmer be it A, B, C... are required by company at point of time, no one can take sole possession of all the A grade programmers, which is otherwise monopoly and attracts an Anti-Trust suit.
Joel-On-Software if I remember right had an article justifying that Attractive Work env. + Best Mind = Success. This is not always true, how practical is to find the best mind always. otherwise, will you put your plans on hold until you find the best minds. In fact the notion of grading programmers as A/B/C..itself doesn't make any sense for there isn't a single method to quantitatively differentiate a good and a programmer.