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Geeks On a Plane Proposed To Solve Global Tech Skills Crisis
judgecorp writes "British Airways' Ungrounded project proposes to shut 100 Silicon Valley 'gamechangers' in a trans-Atlantic plane and ask them to solve the world's tech skills crisis during a 12-hour flight to London. On arrival, the passengers will head into a conference where they will present their ideas to, among others, the UN. From the article: 'Ungrounded, as the project is called, will bring 100 “innovators” (Silicon Valley CEOs, thinkers and venture capitalists) on a private BA flight from San Francisco to London. During the flight, they will take part in a “global hack” run by Ideo, a design firm which has made mice for Microsoft and Apple.'"
Put at least Stallman, ESR and Torvalds on that plane.
All fun and games until the guy in front decides to fully recline and you no longer have space to open your laptop. Aside from the usual 'hackathon' merits and drawbacks (personally, I'm not a fan of working flat out over my weekends); why on earth would you want to do this on a plane, in a noisy, cramped environment where you get to breathe in the same recycled air for 9 hours of pure mystery... I mean "fun".
They'll be great at brainstorming innovative ways of suckering gullible investors out of money, not sure what else "Silicon Valley CEOs, thinkers and venture capitalists" can do though.
I can solve this on ten seconds. Stop asking for every stupid little skill on the job ad and people would match. A good programmer is a good programmer.
End of rant :)
On a long enough timeline. The survival rate for everyone drops to zero. Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, 1996
Put the world's leading scientists in a locked room for a year and tell them to solve one of the world's most pressing problem. Mention that if they can't do it in a year, they get executed.
If they fail, it'll give more motivation for the next group.
What do venture capitalists and CEOs know about innovation?
Two things wrong with that idea: Firstly, it would put people that actually matter there, making it a high risk operation. Secondly, they don't want people who care about contributing to society interfering. By the way, what bloody crisis? There are plenty of people with skills, just recognize them and people will aspire to acquire skills too (because what we need is access and personal motivation). It still annoys me that Gates got the wrong honorary doctorate (technology, should have been business).
Those are some great people. Good thing they built this think tank and thank God we have such great people to rely on!
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
The only global crisis I am aware of is the desire for western companies to drive down tech engineering and programmers wages.
What else could they be trying to solve on a freakin' plane?
-- Mean People Suck
Of course they'll want unlimited H-1Bs since that's what the Harvard Business school taught them to say.
What is it they think SV CEOs and VCs really know how to do well actually?
It isn't solve the world's problems, it's monetize them.
It's more along the lines of turning what used to be a one-time $35 dollar product you purchase into a $8/month for-the-rest-of-your-life monthly service fee.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The rest will follow, right?
(Captcha: wartime)
100 "innovators" (Silicon Valley CEOs, thinkers and venture capitalists)
How glad I am they put innovators in quotes.
They should have done the same to geeks in the heading.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
implement a global technocracy
that is all we need
Does it go on forever?
They'll just spend the better part of those 12 hours to get WiFi on board.
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
Flight redirected... to india!
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
just think think what a single ground to air missile could accomplish - almost as good a start as 100 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Unhinged, more like.
But then any publicity is good publicity, right?
Just remember how much money Gates spent on a self declared failed education project....
They might be damn good at making money, but they are not as good or dont even care wellbeing for the majority... After all they are represent the best of what is making the world be as it is, socially speaking.
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
I have had it with these motherfucking geeks on this motherfucking plane!
As long as they also put plenty of venomous snakes on the plane. They'll need more than one flight to cut out all of the deadwood at the top, but it's got potential.
CEOs and VCs are not necessarily the people who have ideas, and if they do, they *already* have the means to express them. I'd rather see 100 respected, talented, peer-voted if necessary, folks on the panel: *true* technocrats, true innovators, not financial folks; people with ideas, sometimes wacky ideas, rather than folks money; the people who turn down a promotion to management because it would take them away from the detailed problem-solving.
Geeks on a plane. Great! Get back on the plane and fly to Haiti and figure out how to help those people. The $20B we sent them seems to not have arrived.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Bull$"/?
There's no skills crisis, there's a corporate unwillingness to pay for skill crisis.You want me, who has spent nearly three decades learning continuously, struggling to understand the latest IT technologies, some so bleeding edge that I helped form the damned standards, to work for the same amount of money I earned 30 years ago, while you, with your Business Administration undergraduate degree from Florida State take home nearly a million a year because you talk a maelstrom of bullshit every time you open your mouth.
F % ( # Y O U
...another tech bubble
It's just a bunch of rich bastards going on a junket dreaming up more ways to exploit cheap labor... and fucking the stewardesses
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
To fix the shortage, you can start by paying people what they are worth. IT work requires education (either college, on the job, and/or continuing education classes) This is not cheap, it is not easy to keep up with, and employers should pony up the funds to keep talent that can handle it, and help with paying for it (with both money and time off for classes.) If you look at the market, the places willing to pay for the top talent will get it.
Stop burn out... No one should ever be forced to work 50+ hour weeks on a regular basis. It may occasionally happen due to deadlines or support issues, but if it is a regular occurrence, there is a problem and it needs to be fixed. Many people leave the IT field due to stress, and this is a big reason.
End age discrimination... While fixing the above items can help this, and it does not happen everywhere, this is out there. A person doesn't go instantly dumb at 40... While there are exceptions, most IT people are willing to learn, if you are moving everything to the cloud and your entire department only knows COBOL, whose fault is that? A little training can go a long way. Re-training your IT department for your needs is a smart investment, if you are loyal to your employees, most will actually become loyal to you...
While I'm sure MBA's will disagree, if you change these policies, you will no longer have an IT shortage.
And here is one more, this one is more the fault of education instead of corporations... (also, mostly about developers, but it might apply to other fields)
We need to teach people how to program, not programming languages. There are too many people that learn a language without learning any programming concepts. They end up googling even simple programming solutions and slap crap together that needs to be rewritten with every minor spec change. The people that learned how to program will write something that is flexible and can be modified as the system evolves. Over time this will allow for time savings which will translate into needing fewer developers.
Looking for a job?
Want your resume written professionally?
DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
and condoms...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
wonder if there's a cabin air source switch in the flight deck to change from compressor bleed air to turbine bleed air
it would put people that actually matter there, making it a high risk operation
only in the case of torvalds... the other two are just hacktivists
they don't want people who care about contributing to society interfering
actually torvalds would fit quite well... he cares about engineering, not people
I know single-video comment is bad form, but I cannot think of anything more fitting than this.
"You have 10 years experience with Linux Visual Studio Distributed Synchronous Multithreaded Transactional Space Cloud Computing 2013. You will be responsible for mission critical projects and budgets 2M+. You are expected to be on call. We offer competitive compensation of up to $4/h."
In order to encourage innovation let's put the U.S. Congress on a similar flight.
With 11 hours of fuel.
I've had it with these motherfucking geeks on this motherfucking plane!
if you get all the SV CEOs and VCs onto one plane most of the tech world's problems could be eliminated with one well aimed SAM.
I think it is quite limited what you can get all three of them to agree on. But once they do agree on something, chances are it will be a really good idea.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Good that you mention aspiration. Today, our brightest kids are thinking about the career to pursue, and are faced with the following choice: coast through law school and get a job that pays well and is well-respected (I meant by regular folks, not us). Grab a masters in business school and be a high earning manager or hot shot consultant. Or slog your way through a masters in tech, which is generally far more difficult and often takes longer as well, after which you'll have a job that earns you little respect and pay to match (that's not a coincidence, by the way). The find out that companies mostly offer only sucky career progression, often having no way up except going into middle management, where you end up at a level which your buddy who went to business school got right out of the gate, more or less. What the hell kind of choice is that?
Back when I was deciding which uni to go to (in the late 80s), people already said you'd have to be mad to pick a career in tech, and since then things haven't improved any. I went anyway, as I prefer to do the things I love doing.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
it would put people that actually matter there, making it a high risk operation
only in the case of torvalds... the other two are just hacktivists
Classifying RMS as "just a hacktivist" only highlights your ignorance. I suggest you read up on everything he's achieved (he started emacs, gdb and gcc to name a few) as a hacker before making such an unfounded claim.
The fact that RMS also cares about people and not just about sating his own technological cravings is a positive point imho, whether I agree with him or not (and I often don't)
Condoms? No, I think they're just trying to get geeks to breed.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
Uh. No. I'm kind of hoping that plane crashes.
Thing is, what made silicon valley what it was is a bunch of people trying all new things without the encumberance of a colon-full of patents and lawyers to spread them around. (See what I did there? It was intentional... let the image sink in.)
Want the "good old days" back? Remove the kings of the hill and let's see a new scramble to the top. It wasn't WHO got us there as much as that there was a place to go. In the race to the top, there was less effort in trying to keep everyone else down and more into trying to rise to the top.
Put the best of your thinkers on a single plane and shout about it in all the media in advance. No way the plane could be targeted.
scratch stallman. That man can't get along with anybody
...the letters "B-Ark" should be distinctly visible.
I turned down their invitation when I found out it wasn't on a flight to Las Vegas.
That many devs on one aircraft... makes on a plane.
Good idea, bad choice of people.
The real innovators and creative people are rarely the ones you see in the news or on the boards. More often then not, they are unknown.
It does take a visionary CEO or such to lead these people and to make their ideas into products, I do not want to diminish the skills of those people. Steve Jobs was one of them. But Steve Jobs did not invent the iPhone - he lead a company that did. The inspired the creative people within Apple that did. The created the environment in which they could.
Finding the really brilliant minds is no small task.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
When were these 'good old days'? There's a story from shortly after the founding of Sun. They got a visit from IBM with a set of patents that they claimed Sun infringed. They sat the patent lawyers down and explained why for each patent it was either invalid or didn't apply. The Nazgul replied that they were probably right, but they could come back with another seven patents that Sun did infringe, and fighting them in court would be far more expensive than Sun could afford. Sun signed a cross-licensing agreement with IBM. This was the early '80s.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
CEOs, venture capitlsts. To work in Silicon Valley they must be able to talk the talk, but I'll bet none of them is a "geek" as the word is used now. Though some might be adept at biting the heads off chickens.
Probably a good thing considering how clueless real geeks can be about how society works. They tend to be either libertarians, communists or anarchists. All equally unreal and unworkable philosophies in the real world.
Anyway, obviously the CEOs and venture capitalists will advocate importing cheap talent from poor countries to replace the expensive local workers. The only interesting thing is how they will present it to try to make it seem like a good thing for the first world workers. "You'll all be promoted to managers" maybe.
Coast through Law School? The only people I've heard of coasting through Law School never made it all the way through or stopped coasting after the first quarter. You know how some movies show law students running on treadmills with their books in front of them so they can study at the same time? That actually happens in real life all the time.
Would that be the second plane, which by total coincidence is also the first scheduled to leave?
That group of bovine standing over there appears quite portentous. That's right it's an ominous cow herd.
All global problems are political problems. The technical problems can be solved in short time (about 10 years). Real problems, like a non sustainable way to produce goods, are on a technical basis easy to solve. It may take time to implement, but they are not hard to solve. For most problems solution concepts already exist. However, it will not happen until politicians are able to establish an political process to do start the transformation. The skill crisis is also only a political problem. If politics would invest more money in education, reduce visa barriers, and support child education in a way that the sciences are presented in a positive way so that children like to look into these fields.
On the other side. Every software company I have seen, is not able to produce software in an efficient way. The all tinker with code instead of using solid processes. Single projects which used proper management methods all finished in time and stayed in a maintainable form.
They'll land with $15m VC funding, specs on which beanbags they want and a tech spec that reads "node.js + cloud".
... and snakes
Oh, wait, it would be too cruel (to the snakes)
Depending on how they were selected, that eventuality could solve the skill crisis. Several other planes full of bankers, politicians and lobbyist to fix the economy crisis could work in the same way.
masters in tech. The school system needs to change.
It's to long / way to much upfront with out hands on work parts.
Tech needs some like of apprenticeship system that is not tied to 2-4+ years of pure class room.
non degree qualifications need more respect as well.
There are lots of boot camps, tech / trades schools, non degree classes offed at Community Colleges, hands on learning / skills you can only really pick up on the job.
To much theory leads to skill gaps and in tech Experience is big as well more hands on classes.
college for all needs to be replaced with more vocational education and Apprenticeship programs
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-05-27/opinions/35456501_1_college-students-josipa-roksa-private-colleges-and-universities
That’s why college-for-all has been a major blunder. One size doesn’t fit all, as sociologist James Rosenbaum of Northwestern University has argued. The need is to motivate the unmotivated. One way is to forge closer ties between high school and jobs. Yet, vocational education is de-emphasized and disparaged. Apprenticeship programs combining classroom and on-the-job training — programs successful in Europe — are sparse. In 2008, about 480,000 workers were apprentices, or 0.3 percent of the U.S. labor force, reports economist Robert Lerman of American University. Though not for everyone, more apprenticeships could help some students.
The more interesting experiment would be to see what happens to their companies, ideas, and ventures should they not return...
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
End job based health insurance that is part of why they don't like older people the other is they don't like to work end less 80+ hour weeks.
i am SICK of these MUTHAFUCKIN REFERENCES to that MUTHAFUCKIN MOVIE!!!!!
Classifying RMS as "just a hacktivist" only highlights your ignorance. I suggest you read up on everything he's achieved (he started emacs, gdb and gcc to name a few) as a hacker before making such an unfounded claim.
The fact that RMS also cares about people and not just about sating his own technological cravings is a positive point imho, whether I agree with him or not (and I often don't)
RMS tends to undermine any "free software" argument by virtue of being a religious fundamentalist... Don't get me wrong, I'm a big supporter of free software, but RMS seems to go to great lengths to compromise on freedom in order to push his free software religion.
Example: he recommends using GPL instead of LGPL in situations where there is no reasonable competing library, in order to remove developers' freedom to use non-GPL licences for their software. Note - this isn't a consistent "everything should always be GPLed" view, he specifically says the choice of licence is down to whether or not you could use the GPL to remove other people's freedoms.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
12 hours is not going to sole the UK's problem that "engineers" and all of us with technical skills are considered greasy plebs" who will drip oil over the drawing room carpet.
You not going to over turn hundreds of years of history in one flight.
The problem is they clearly don't have the best of the best boffins - such as these guys:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUbjpwyesk0
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
There is no "tech skills crisis". There is a "unwillingness of businesses to pay people what they are worth" crisis. The natural function of supply and demand drives prices up when demand rises. While I'm not a proponent of the free market solving all the world's ills (left to its own devices, the damage that big business could do is unacceptable, since the free market requires an informed customer base, and we don't have that), this is a situation where the market is being unacceptably manipulated by moneyed interests influencing labor markets in a way that artificially drives prices down for a given market. If you want to attract high-quality talent (and that's not a given, a lot of employers don't want "good", they want "cheap", and then wonder why their product is shit), in a sane market, you have to treat your employees better than the other guy. Since the world would apparently collapse in upon itself if employees were treated like the valuable assets they are instead of greedy, lazy, expensive liabilities that are always whining about working conditions, we have a "tech skills crisis". It's fixable. Corporate profits are at all-time highs, productivity is off the charts, yet wages have been pretty much stagnant (when corrected for inflation) for decades. It's not rocket science. Pay people more and you'll out-produce the other guy. Sure, your company's profits might drop from 17 kajillion dollars to 16 kajillion dollars, but over the long-term (no wonder they can't deal with the concept) you'll come out ahead by producing a better product. But, improving quality is hard, while treating your employees like shit by paying them less and denying good benefits is easy and saves (short-term) money.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
In a way, that might not be a bad idea. Getting all the 'game changers' together will not solve any kind of 'skills crisis', there are more people capable of filling those roles then room for them at the top already, people who did not have the luck/timing or other factors that resulted in someone else getting propelled to a high profile position.
And of course there is the glaring flaw in their plan.... the skill crisis generally refers to midrange developers, people with significant skill but still close to the actual work being done. We have plenty of entry level people, and plenty of people competing for those top possitions, but have trouble filling the middle.
I think that depends on whether a student is pursuing a computer science degree or a software engineering degree. Unfortunately many schools don't provide such a distinction, but there's no reason why a true computer science student should have to do an apprenticeship. Software engineering is about using tools to create systems and products and solving real-world problems with software, so an apprenticeship would be much more applicable for software engineering students.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Fill the unoccupied seats with patent lawyers and you've got my vote.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Like all "golden eras"... they never were.
I just got done reading a book on Edwin Land, and one of the things the book covered was how careful he was to get his stuff patented and protected as far back as the 1920's. One of the reasons why Polaroid had essentially a monopoly over instant cameras for so long (essentially from the late 40's to the late 80's) is that they patented the hell out of every detail. Or, one can go back even further - one of the reasons Electric Boat took such an early and commanding lead in submarine construction is that back in the late 1800's-early 1900's they held several key patents on submarine design features. Even after the patents expired, the "grace period" they provided allowed EB to build up such a reservoir of capital and experience that by the 1920's they were virtually the last man standing.
The "golden era" of Silicon Valley wasn't so much about lack of patents, as it was the rapid growth of the electronics and computer industries during that time. They were very lucky in that there were several booms, mostly overlapping each other... but the boom times are gone now that industry is more-or-less mature. However, that hasn't stopped them or others from treating such boom times as $DIETY-given right.
Solve a massively complicated problem that has eluded some of the best minds for years and involves solutions on a global scale in a meer 12 hours. Some might think that a publicity stunt to promote an airline but I think we can solve all the worlds problems this way. The problem is selecting the correct 100 or so people to dispose of this way for each problem. CEO's are just a starting point. Dictators, Bankers would be high on my list. The massively wealthy certain are causing a great deal of our problems.
Any business leaders who can't figure out why there's a technical skills shortage probably also can't dress themselves, navigate public walkways or avoid urinating in public. As has been stated, ad nauseam, it's about the money and prestige. Treat skilled IT professionals with the same regard as management (IT manages machines, not people) and provide commensurate salaries and watch that shortage vanish like the morning dew.
The guy in the stockroom is "the help." The garage mechanics are "The help." IT professional are NOT the "the help," and for the enlightenment of the one or two MBAs reading this, we're smarter than you, on average. As management, you ignore this at their peril.
Everything else said about the subject is delusional bullshit - the kind of circle-jerk-in-the-echo-chamber at which recent American MBAs excel.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I still think in this scenario the solution is a FIM-92 in capable hands...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
He specifically says
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html
Proprietary software developers have the advantage of money; free software developers need to make advantages for each other. Using the ordinary GPL for a library gives free software developers an advantage over proprietary developers: a library that they can use, while proprietary developers cannot use it. ...
This is why we used the Lesser GPL for the GNU C library. After all, there are plenty of other C libraries; using the GPL for ours would have driven proprietary software developers to use anotherâ"no problem for them, only for us.
However, when a library provides a significant unique capability, like GNU Readline, that's a horse of a different color. The Readline library implements input editing and history for interactive programs, and that's a facility not generally available elsewhere. Releasing it under the GPL and limiting its use to free programs gives our community a real boost. At least one application program is free software today specifically because that was necessary for using Readline.
Just as free software is not a religion, proprietary developers do not have a freedom to use libraries created by free software developers. Where did you get that idea from?
Developers in general have a right to use software under the license it was released, and RMS is suggesting that free software developers use the license that best promotes the adoption of free software.
Indeed, this is one issue where he clearly shows pragmatism, by suggesting that commonly-available libraries be released under the lesser GPL. Yet you turn this around and claim that, by doing so, he is going 'to great lengths to compromise on freedom in order to push his free software religion'.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
Exactly. Hire smart people, make it part of their job to spend one day a week in training in new tech, and you'll have no more skills crisis in no time.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Answer to turning a mediocre library-style developer who can barely code a while loop, into a star programmer who builds the libraries: Include one day a week of his work week as mandatory training in the skills that are missing.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Hint on how to fill the middle- require your mid-level people to teach a training class one day a week to the new people.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Heh, skill list and requirements... Lemme guess, 10 years of professional C#, 20 years of Java and no older than 25?
I've seen skill lists that boarder insanity... from the INSANE side, that is. Where they expect skills you cannot possibly have because to get them, you'd have to be in a job where you sold your soul to get training on them (and hence you can't get out). Where they expect more years of experience with a technology than the technology existed. And after you read the rest, those requirements would actually be on the saner side.
Hence I started hiring from within. No matter whether you have the skills I'm looking for, there are three things I'm looking for:
1. Ability and willingness to learn (well, duh), as well as at least a hint of predisposition towards the subject matter.
2. Tenure and a stable work record (so I know you won't just learn and then leave, and I know you're not some slacker)
3. Availability (i.e. your superior doesn't fight me tooth and nail to keep you... ok, that's optional, if I want you, I'll go into the fight)
The rest I'll get into your skull somehow. I will have to train anyone I get anyway. The skill set we require is so narrow and specific that it is absolutely impossible to find anyone like that unless I'm willing to pay twice my salary. And even if I wanted, I cannot.
Instead, this way I get someone who is first of all grateful that I got him out of our testing pool (not really the position you want to be in, if you can handle the stress there, you can handle it up here easily), who I can tie and bind contractually for 5 years to the company (or he'll have to pay back the expenses for the training he receives) and who has EXACTLY the skill set I want!
Plus, it's nice to see every test crew head shiver when I head down to HR. They know what's coming. :)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Maybe, maybe not. Teaching is also a skill, and having people who suck at it teaching the people under them can be worse then useless.
By that standard didn't Linus just re-implement a kernel?
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
What a Communist idea! Odd that it works so well in most of Europe.
But the US must fight that tooth and nail. Luckily, due to the health care system there, chances are lower that they still have enough teeth and nails to fight for long.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...put all your eggheads in one basket. Seems like your just begging for an attack.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
This premise, writ large, dates back at least to Frederick Pohl's 1982 novel Starburst . Eight varied, smart people are sent off on a long journey to a distant star. They soon discover there is no star toward which they're heading, and the whole thing was designed to get them to solve a lot of the world's problems.
Not a lot of the SF I read as a kid stayed with me into adulthood, but I still think about that one on occasion. I guess that's partly because of the fantasy that, I'm learning, appeals to so many nerds: that we might finally have time to sit down, without distractions, and "work it all out". (Now that I think of it, like Descartes at the beginning of the Meditations ...)
"The Problem Pit" by Fred Pohl. I forget how it ended... mass extinction? Incest? Everyone goes home happy?
I'll add: Link the amount of student aid available in the U.S. to the expected earnings. Engineering students == lots of aid. English majors* == little aid.
(Yes, I know there are exceptions -- we're talking *averages* here.)
The pilot? He's the guy who approved patents.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Did you somehow miss the fact that Apple broke the status quo that you just mentioned by refusing to sign cross-licensing agreements? And if you think that one-click would have passed muster as a patent in the '80s you also slept through the transition from when method patents were not allowed to the current condition where they are. Just because it was bad before doesn't mean it can't get worse.
When were these 'good old days'?
1775
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
NO ONE is willing to pay for quality programming mentoring.
Just look at how unsuccessful PHPU.cc is at just $50/month.
No one values education any more or thinks everything should be free free free, so quality products whither and die.
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
Everyone expects apprenticeship systems to be free.
Just check out www.phpu.cc for a very cheap and very cost effective PHP mentoring system.
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
I don't mean to sound like a troll, but that is a load of crap. There are a lot of professions for the "brightest" outside of business and tech that not only pay well but they can also enjoy.
As for not being able to enjoy a technology job, that goes the same as with everything else. Those who can simply understand technology will end up at the help desk. Those with vision will probably end up designing and implementing.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
They are invested in the world(game) as it is today. So they have no motivation to change it.
Show me someone that will undercut their bottom line. Until then I will question their motivation.
There are no shortage of tech workers. There is only a shortage of tech workers willing to work below their market value. And a bunch of crooked business people trying to undercut the capitalistic market they supposedly support. It's the same story we hear all the time.
Where have you been the last 7 years?
Europe.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
By the way, what bloody crisis?
Came here to ask this, is it the same faux shortage of tech workers (actually a shortage of very cheap tech workers) or is it something I don't know about?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you build it, we will land!!!
Yep, the real skills gap is that employers do not want to pay for skills.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Yeah, come back when you re-implement a troll!
Oh, wait, D'oh!
The guy in the stockroom is "the help." The garage mechanics are "The help." IT professional are NOT the "the help," and for the enlightenment of the one or two MBAs reading this, we're smarter than you, on average. As management, you ignore this at their peril.
If techs were so smart, they'd have the salaries and power MBAs do. I got my PhD in EE. I was probably the "smartest" of my friends in engineering school, but they all got out of engineering and switched to business either in undergrad, or shortly after graduating. I was the "smartest", and the biggest dumbass.
Smart isn't being able to churn through equations the fastest. Smart is making the best decisions. By that standard, IT professionals are morons.
Yeah, the GPL is very pragmatic... the only thing "religious" about it is that once some code converts to GPL, it stays GPL. But that's the point... to prevent people from "stealing" GPL code and making it proprietary again.
RMS came from the background of having to debug crappy proprietary code delivered from vendors. Ever read stories about what things were like in those days? Without the source code and without vendor cooperation, they were having to make binary patches to binary files to fix critical bugs in production executables and libraries. RMS wanted to put an end to that... if you deliver a software product, you need to provide the source code to the user so that user can fix your shit (or give the code to someone else to fix).
That is all. There's nothing in the GPL that explicitly says you have to put the code in the public domain! You just have to deliver the code to whomever you distribute it to. And you can charge money for both! It just so happens that since your customer is free to redistribute your code to whomever for free, that the easiest way to comply with the GPL is to publish your code on a public server... but that is not a firm requirement.
In fact, it seems ideal for banks, government, military, etc. to stipulate that all code they contract for is covered by the GPL... even code that they want to keep secret. They could buy a bunch of code from Company A, and if they mess it up, they're free to give the delivered code to another vendor Company B to fix and maintain. That scenario would be impossible under most proprietary licenses... they'd simply have to throw away just about everything delivered by Company A that they can't recompile or integrate. And the GPL wouldn't make anyone give the source to anyone else (i.e. the public) that doesn't have the binaries. I suppose the only grey area is if they piss off Company B, is Company B allowed to take the "secret" GPL'd code they got from their customer to maintain and put it out for public distribution?
apprenticeship systems does not need to be free but it not cost 20K+ a year and it does not need to last for 2-4+ years at that price.
The college system is to much one size fits all and pushing so many in to it drives up costs and Dumb's it Down as well.
Can I volunteer?
Why make an artificial distinction between technical and business innovation? You're not going to have true innovation until the technology gets used for something valuable and/or interesting. From the VC point of view, that means a sellable product that a working business gets wrapped around.
They already mentioned putting the lawers up on the plane
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
You could even sell the rights to streaming media of the event. I am sure millions will subscribe.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
RMS is known for what he says, not what he does
Torvalds is known for what he does, not what he says
RMS talked about open source and free software philosophy
Torvalds was the engineer that made it work, and continues to be a critical cog in the engine that helps maintain Linux supremacy to this day
FOSS and Linux won't die with Torvalds, but it will be interesting to see what happens to the quality of the Linux kernel when it leaves control of its one and only real master.
India and China can solve the world's tech skills crisis with more bodies for Silicon Valley and US, EU ... CEOs. More work-visas and illegal-residents will always solve the skills problems for chicken processing, grape picking, software developing, engineering design, corporate welfare, political elections . Visas and illegal’s have solved labor crisis’s for decades now. Why not continue ?
By importing labor, we can save on education, healthcare, first responders, housing loans and provide communities for the newest and youngest amoral entrepreneurs in the drug, sex, larceny sectors of the US and EU underground economy. Religious conservative scientist would say “it’s all relativity, gods’ will.”
The more things sound the same:
In the 1700s the peasants could not survive without fealty to an aristocracy.
In the 1800s the small dirt farmers’ survival ended the big plantation farms.
In the 1900s the small businesses could not compete with national Corporations.
In the 2000s the citizens must serve the whim/will of Corporation Welfare states.
The less things appear changed for US, EU, RU, CN, IN .
Make'em sound different, and folks will think they got some difference.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?