Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Unveils "Elevate America"
nandemoari writes "In response to the current economic crisis, Microsoft Corp. has come out with a stimulus plan of their own. Their goal is to help a large group of individuals use their computers to land employment in ways other than to generate a compelling resume. The new online initiative, Elevate America, is set to equip close to 2 million people (over the next three years) with the skills needed to succeed in the field of technology."
First off, of course computer sales are in a slump. They were in a slump during the last big economic downturn, too. (Remember the "bubble"?) That doesn't mean much of anything.
Second: Microsoft's slump is probably due more to peoples' general (and increasing) dissatisfaction with Microsoft than anything else. But the economy will hurt them, too. Maybe a lot. After all, a 5-year-old PC can run Linux just fine. But try Vista on it. Nope, didn't think so.
I would be willing to bet that Microsoft's slump lasts longer than any slump for Intel or AMD or Google.
And IBM? Who cares? When was the last time YOU bought something from IBM?
Elevate America has two main offerings, one available immediately and one that will be provided in partnership with state governments
Translation: MS will get money earmarked for retraining programs in order to flood the market with MS trained workers, depressing the wages of the latter and making their "TCO" so much more attractive.
You have to admire a company that is able to screw us coming and going.
Bullshit.
Most interesting jobs are for people who can drive any car - whether it's a Toyota or a Renault.
We're a 50-50 linux shop (a big bank), and if you "I DON'T DO WINDOWS", we regard you as the same dogmatic crowd as "I'M SCARED OF LINUX, IT HAS A COMMAND LINE". The clueless crowd we don't hire.
If you're a professional systems engineer, you can manage anything (and code and script on it).
If you're dogmatic about a product, you're putting your religious beliefs (those that tack 'good' and 'evil' labels on things such as Microsoft, GNU or the open-source community) before the interests of your employer, and we wouldn't touch you with a 10-meter pole.
Best advice I can give is be ambivalent - get the fact you're a techie across. If you can sell yourself as an a-religious techie, you'll be in more demand.
Make a potential employer understand you'll do what is best for him, and you won't let your decisions for him be dictated either by your fear of one thing or religious dogma favoring the other.
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You're prediction of the demise of English as the World trade language is quite premature.
After all, the World speaks English not because of currency, but because of music and movies.
When the next Batman movie and T-Pain record come out in Farsi, then you can start talking about the "Death of English". And dubbing doesn't count. I speak Italian, but watching The Simpsons in la Lingua just isn't as good.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I doubt greatly that English will be a reasonable choice for trade language into the next decade.
No, I think English will be the common language for most of this century at least. Although the English that is commonly used ten years from now may be as foreign to our ears as the English of Shakespeare. English is evolving faster than it ever has before.
For over a decade, there have been more people who have learned English as a second language (ESL) than there are native speakers of English. At this point in time, there may be more ESL speakers than sum of all the native speakers of English who ever lived. If we ar not at that point yet, we soon will be.
We are also very close to the point where more communication in English is being done between ESL speakers than is being done between a native speaker of English and an ESL speaker. It is common in FOSS projects to find a Finn, a Brazilian, and a Japanese person using English in their correspondence while they fix a bug or develop a feature.
Would someone who knows how to do it propose a Slashdot poll for me? Something like this:
It would be neat to see this done every couple of years, see what the trend is.