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User: dougg76

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  1. Re:The problem with older developers... on Why Companies Should Hire Older Developers · · Score: 1

    Yes, but the manager has to Justify the investors to fork over the big bucks for the experience guy now rather latter. Now days they just yell to ship it ASAP and we can patch it latter :/

  2. Re:Capitalism on Why Companies Should Hire Older Developers · · Score: 1

    It's not that simple. If too much wealth concentrates, it will lead to the usurping of democracy and anti-competitive behaviors. Government has to have the power and resources to keep other powers in check. It's like the old power struggles between kings and the dukes; If one side gets too powerful, there will be fracturing and bloodshed.

  3. Re:Capitalism on Why Companies Should Hire Older Developers · · Score: 1

    Unless of course the numbers work in such a way where those hiring feel they can a get better value out of younger people who are more predisposed to working long unpaid hours and have lower base salaries. The problem with blind capitalism and democracy is that it requires constant regulation and refactoring in order to facilitate a stable humane society; It's a delicate balance.

  4. Re:While I'm not agreeing with discrimination... on Median Age At Google Is 29, Says Age Discrimination Lawsuit · · Score: 1

    Yes, this free trade / world economy is working out so well...

  5. Re: Affirmative action crap on Median Age At Google Is 29, Says Age Discrimination Lawsuit · · Score: 1

    If Google / x megacorp really could not find qualified applicants locally, then why would they not pick up people from countries that are comparable to the US in larger proportions? I should see a lot of Germans and Japanese H1B workers, but they are barely represented...

  6. Re:That shouldn't surprise anyone on Median Age At Google Is 29, Says Age Discrimination Lawsuit · · Score: 1

    So much this. I use to love to code, but I have just lost my heart for it. Once I realized that even business coding positions are asking pedantic questions to filter people out, it just looses its long term charm. One place I interviewed at started with a questioner with approximately twenty high school like math story problems. The crazy thing is that the only real way to solve these types of problems is to be able to recall their "patterns". If I were right out of high school, I probably would have had little problem in figuring them out.

    It's funny. I always hear people talk about how education courses are crap, however after going to a few of these "technical" interviews, it becomes obvious that interviewers are blatantly ignorant of how to assess candidates. I took a few "teaching" classes back when I was considering teaching math, and even by just that little exposure to pedagogy, I can say with certainty that assessing peoples abilities is complex and laborious; Maybe that is why most interviewer attempts seem so sophomoric...

  7. Re:Computer science absolutely IS science on Ask Slashdot: Are General Engineering Skills Undervalued In Web Development? · · Score: 1

    The word science has been debased over time; It was originally applied to those who tried to unravel the mysteries of nature. It started with "social studies" picking up the term "social sciences" to gain more credibility... Honestly, CS has a lot more to do with being like a mathematician than a traditional scientist. There is a "science" for everything now.

  8. Re:I find that they're predictable... on Ask Slashdot: What Portion of Developers Are Bad At What They Do? · · Score: 1

    And the mentality that they have to say yes to everything. What the hell happened to "I am not sure, but I will find out.", or "I am sorry, but that timeline is not realistic."

  9. Re:What Portion of Companies Are Bad At What They on Ask Slashdot: What Portion of Developers Are Bad At What They Do? · · Score: 1

    Besides the point that goats are kindred bearded spirits, I find their ability to scream like humans appealing. Is it bad when you get to a point in life where you start to seriously consider going back to farming? It just seems appealing to have a job where you can work hard and feel like you accomplished something. I could have been a master goat herder / cheese maker or something...

  10. Re:What Portion of Companies Are Bad At What They on Ask Slashdot: What Portion of Developers Are Bad At What They Do? · · Score: 1

    Oh no it's contagious! I know that it does happen in other industries, I just don't think it is as prominent. Part of the problem is that software is not as regulated as other traditional engineering fields. I am guessing that civil engineer managers don't have to wade threw so much chaff. Then again, I think its ridiculous that they want people with engineer level credentials to work on mundane operational business software. Anyone with a computer is a programmer in an abstract way.

  11. Re:What Portion of Companies Are Bad At What They on Ask Slashdot: What Portion of Developers Are Bad At What They Do? · · Score: 1
    All that being said, my intention for my post was not to come off as arrogant as it seems it may have.

    No, your post was not arrogant. The questions that you asked in your interview seemed very reasonable (as part of a larger battery of questions). My response was not directly pointed at you, but at the software industry, and its lack of overall professionalism.

    On one hand you have folks that have been at it awhile and it's just a paycheck to them - they don't go out of their way to understand the big picture and I feel like that really limits them.

    You are right, it does limit them. They would probably be a decent programmer, but maybe not the best lead programmer. Why is our industry so special that, "just being a paycheck" mentality is not an acceptable as it is in just about every other industry? The software industry is permeated with this mentality that we have to go home and work on our own github project and stay up to date with the framework of the month even though a lot of the code we write is really mundane. Is funny that a lot of interview questions are about algorithms and memory structures when those types of things have been abstracted away in many of the frameworks we have to use.

    I love to program, however my skills have been eroding year after year. I don't study algorithms any more, I barely get to have fun with any good problem solving (that's why we use to love it?). I am just trying to beat this new framework into submission so I can hit some crazy deadline that the US and India team are loosing sleep over.

    The IT field disgust me. Who cares about a field that does not have room for its older workers? We are telling our kids, and the kids we mentor not to go into IT/CS. CS is a awesome tool, but it's a bad career. One of my old shops was full of newly minted graduates in CS EE who were making freekign web pages, what a fantastic wast of human potential.

    I am out of time, I really like how you run things. Maybe if everyone else did the same you would not be in a bind for new talent

  12. Re:What Portion of Companies Are Bad At What They on Ask Slashdot: What Portion of Developers Are Bad At What They Do? · · Score: 1

    I see where you are coming from. You are right, you can't tell from just their resume if they are going to be a good fit. You also can't tell if they are a good fit just because they are good at coding on a white board. Anyone who has studied pedagogy (it is a lot more interesting than it seems) that there is no shortcut to finding a good candidate.

    The questions that are asked should be specifically tailored to actual work that they will be doing. Companies should be courting college graduates in the hopes of growing their skill set and and growing their own senior programmers, rather than poaching from other companies. You can still verify peoples tenure and job by calling their HR office. You can have them answer some architecture questions (if its a senior position), but for god sake don't lower the profession by asking a professional to answer cs 101 crap; There is a good chance they have not had to use some of it in over 10 years.

    The skills that make someone good at white boarding code problems are not the same skills that will make productive programmers (google even admits this). I wan't to know if a person can do x job, therefor I am going to see if they are good at y even though its not related to x...

    A person that can't write a for loop, would not be able to carry a discussion on programming with a tenured programmer. Hell, I can't even get half the people I work for to understand what I am doing let alone a novice.

  13. What Portion of Companies Are Bad At What They Do? on Ask Slashdot: What Portion of Developers Are Bad At What They Do? · · Score: 5, Insightful
    OP this might or might not apply to your situation

    I would like it flip it around and ask you why do you think your companies are actually worth working for? Are you going to employ us when we are 40, 50, 60+? Are you going to ask me a bunch of stupid questions even though I have 20 years of work in my portfolio? I just don't understand why its so acceptable for employers to be so arrogant in the IT world compared to other professions.

    • Do we ask medical professionals to play with putty during an interview to show us how they work?
    • Do we ask engineers to play with toothpicks and tape to build a bridge to assess their worthiness?
    • Do we ask a chef to make a cup of gravy? (they hate that)

    If companies really wanted good people they would:

    • Treat their current employees better.
    • Pay them market rate instead of rewarding job hopping.
    • Learn how to manage.
    • Build a reputation that will attract good talent.
    • Learn how to be professional.

    I have found that software development might be a decent job, but a horrible career. I'm going to go raise goats and make cheese (sorry ranting)

  14. We home-schooled our kids for 5 years. on Ask Slashdot: Pros and Cons of Homeschooling? · · Score: 1

    Our kids were educated at home from around 4th grade to 9th grade. I feel that high school is a good time to introduce them to the good and the bad of public education and will help them transition to college and corporate social structures; Having them go back to high school will also allow them a more traditional transfer to college and help deflect some of the prejudice they might encounter from the unwashed peasants...

    I wish that I would have home schooled them from 1st to 9th grade; I was always worried that I was not a good enough teacher, and that they might be missing experiences that they would have in a public school. However, because I was able to instill a love of learning to my children, I really did not have to baby step them through their studies. Their young minds were so fast at picking things up that they were hard to keep up with. If desired, I could have easily had them finish high school math in middle school etc. It was never my intent to accelerate their education to to raise a mythical genius child. I simply wanted them to be happy, and not have their young minds adversely indoctrinated during their developmental years.

    We tried to make sure they were well socialized via local community center activities and years of martial arts training. My children had no problem transitioning into the public school system. They were well ahead of their classmates academically and quickly made friends.

  15. Re:Simple corruption on Let Spouses of H-1B Visa Holders Work In US, Says White House · · Score: 1

    Yes, so we can have bigger more corrupt states instead... Displacing the problem does not fix it.

  16. Distribution on Distant Stellar Explosion Helps Map Universe's Dark Ages · · Score: 1

    Your reply does not account for the potential redistribution of wealth. Even if the cheap goods increase with price, it does not mean that the entire brunt of the cost increase will fall to its direct consumers. It might reduce the amount of money available to the speculators instead. Why do people have to talk so rude to each other instead of just making their point?

  17. Re:Heck yes... on Our Education System Is Failing IT · · Score: 2

    Let's not confuse knowledge with critical thinking.

  18. Technical interviews on Our Education System Is Failing IT · · Score: 1

    Maybe we would see more people in IT with problem solving skills / critical thinking if we stopped scaring them off with so many amature rote memory based technical interviews. It's ridiculous! IT professionals need to hire people based on their prior work and references and just quit all the sillyness. Who cares if Joe cant remember how to do a bubble sort by hand during an interview, the guy has been professionally coding fo 10+ years etc. To even think that anything significant can be ascertained via technical interviews shows a lack of understanding of how the human mind works; all you will get with most of these silly test are people that are good at taking silly test.

  19. Re:Where does article say "not enough openings"? on App Developers, It's Time For a Reality Check · · Score: 1

    You are right there are some applications that have to be coded "against the actual OS" but most of the work out there is just enterprize programming that is just a bunch of business logic. I just love how I run into places that hype up all this required CS knowledge and crazy interview algorithm questions, and the most challenging piece of code they excrete is regex... I honestly think we multiple types of programmers, and we should stop trying to put them all in the same bucket. Most programming now days is not rocket science and a lot of programmers need an ego check.

  20. Re:make min wage $20 hr so that worker can live on on More On the Disposable Tech Worker · · Score: 1

    Actually, it depends on where the $20 comes from. I hate to say it, but if it is "redistributed" then no the economy will not inflate.

  21. Re:Old dogs, huh? on More On the Disposable Tech Worker · · Score: 1

    I see what your saying, but I honestly think it's a matter of magnitude. Almost all professions require some retraining, but I would guess that IT has so much retraining that it's volatile. Often times when we reinvent ourselves, we risk loosing a significant value. It has been cited that older programmers actually make less than when they are at their prime working years. We have a much higher burn out rate than medical doctors as well.

  22. Re:Really? on College Board To Rethink the SAT, Partner With Khan Academy · · Score: 1

    The problem is more along the lines of how would an essay in a timed test have any real meaning at all? Metrics will be implemented to ensure that the essay score is not too arbitrary, leading to students just gaming the metrics. Essays are too much of a human thing to be used in these types of test, they will be reduced down to nothingness. It's really just another arbitrary method to eliminate opportunities for people.

  23. Re:For what jobs? on College Board To Rethink the SAT, Partner With Khan Academy · · Score: 1

    This could cut both ways. We might be getting to a point where a globalized economy will reduce the need of "high IQ" people in favor of people that will be happy in service industries (cooking, house cleaning, etc). You really only need so many engineers if there is only a few large companies in the world producing new goods.

  24. Re:For what jobs? on College Board To Rethink the SAT, Partner With Khan Academy · · Score: 1

    It would be nice if we used something more relevant than IQ. Why do people bring up IQ so much when its pretty much a meaningless metric?

  25. Re:Yay for phlogiston and aether on CERN Physicist Says Dark Matter May Be an Illusion · · Score: 1

    I was under the impression that they did not use relativity or special relativity to correct the accuracy of satellite clocks. I thought that they used earth based radio synchronization? I know there was a satellite launched to test special relativity using gyroscopes, but it had a flaw that they were trying to control for. Ether way, I was under the overall impression that the earth satellites were not good case examples of GR or SR. You sparked my curiosity, I'll have to see what I can find. ty ty.