Of course this article is not exactly true, especially not for many engineers.
I think the point has been made that long hours, high stress, and competitive focus severely limit one's ability to get into the dating pool. I don't think, however, that this is the whole story.
If someone is spending time learning how to code and how to design devices, their time is spent in an entirely foreign focus from non-engineers. Learning the dating 'dance' takes time and effort, and most engineers have already dedicated themselves. The computer engineering field is unique in that computers can truly be reward enough for work done, and can suck 100% of an engineer's focus.
It is very easy for a competitive environment to demand absolute attention, and it is very easy for engineers to dedicate their efforts to this environment.
I work in an engineering position at the world's #1 chipset maker, but early on I made the personal decree that no job was worth never learning, never absorbing, an understanding of how women work and what they want/need.
I can't make a sacrifice that great for anything, but it is not hard to see how some people would do it for engineering.
A very good solution, not 100%, but a good one, is to ensure that engineers always have to work in teams. If your focus is entirely on software or electrical design, you severely lack development of communication skills. In teams where communication is the #1 neccessity, this suffering focus is re-aligned to help engineers keep in touch with a more real, communicative world. Granted, it is not an excellent help, but at least an engineer will learn how to maneuver in social situations.
For $270 of *my* dollars, I'd rather spend $20 more and get a GeForce-DDR card - creative, diamond, and guillemot all make fantastic solutions that blow the pants off the performance of ATI's unspectacular MAXX.
They messed up, basically... they find a hard time beating TNT2 Ultra cards, which run $100 cheaper and are well established (with good OpenGL)...
Not too mention their lame driver support right now, versus nVidia's solid existing drivers, their commitment to driver optimizations, and their production of stable cards...
the only thing GeForce is weak at is it's relatively slow SDRAM (only 150MHz) and its slim memory interface (64Mbit).
An intelligent consumer would skip the ATIRage Fury MAXX (and the new S3) and go with a good TNT2 Ultra or shell out the big bucks for the GeForce-DDR.
Visit their truly invigorating Jolt Web site... I swear, late nights at the office, I visit this site and actually gain some energy just looking at that all-too-familiar flashing lightning bolt...
...I think something should be added about mowing through thousands of lines of code and the soundtrack to Hackers or similar churning in the background...
and honestly... Twinkies? Whatever... Mt. Dew and the original Jolt cola (with the possible addition of their new Grape flavor) are all I need... and cigarettes.
and most programmers have great social skills... their scope is just "special" and almost a different culture and language than the rest of society's... like, instead of fat blonde jokes, we have Micro$haft and dumb end user jokes that make us wiggle.
Yeah, but if we did that the fancy shmancy Word Processors would slow to a halt, the spreadsheets would take a minute to compute values, the sources would take hours to compile, the... etc...
I use every MHz they clock these puppies up to, and I like this new function because it will accomplish a lot, believe it or not.
Power consumption is reduced a great deal by shifting down the voltage, and a lot of battery life is added by the power down.
Having worked quite a bit with these new FC-PGA pIII's, I can tell you that from 400-600MHz the productivity scales very well.
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I think the point has been made that long hours, high stress, and competitive focus severely limit one's ability to get into the dating pool. I don't think, however, that this is the whole story.
If someone is spending time learning how to code and how to design devices, their time is spent in an entirely foreign focus from non-engineers. Learning the dating 'dance' takes time and effort, and most engineers have already dedicated themselves. The computer engineering field is unique in that computers can truly be reward enough for work done, and can suck 100% of an engineer's focus.
It is very easy for a competitive environment to demand absolute attention, and it is very easy for engineers to dedicate their efforts to this environment.
I work in an engineering position at the world's #1 chipset maker, but early on I made the personal decree that no job was worth never learning, never absorbing, an understanding of how women work and what they want/need.
I can't make a sacrifice that great for anything, but it is not hard to see how some people would do it for engineering.
A very good solution, not 100%, but a good one, is to ensure that engineers always have to work in teams. If your focus is entirely on software or electrical design, you severely lack development of communication skills. In teams where communication is the #1 neccessity, this suffering focus is re-aligned to help engineers keep in touch with a more real, communicative world. Granted, it is not an excellent help, but at least an engineer will learn how to maneuver in social situations.
For $270 of *my* dollars, I'd rather spend $20 more and get a GeForce-DDR card - creative, diamond, and guillemot all make fantastic solutions that blow the pants off the performance of ATI's unspectacular MAXX.
They messed up, basically... they find a hard time beating TNT2 Ultra cards, which run $100 cheaper and are well established (with good OpenGL)...
Not too mention their lame driver support right now, versus nVidia's solid existing drivers, their commitment to driver optimizations, and their production of stable cards...
the only thing GeForce is weak at is it's relatively slow SDRAM (only 150MHz) and its slim memory interface (64Mbit).
An intelligent consumer would skip the ATIRage Fury MAXX (and the new S3) and go with a good TNT2 Ultra or shell out the big bucks for the GeForce-DDR.
End of story.
Visit their truly invigorating Jolt Web site... I swear, late nights at the office, I visit this site and actually gain some energy just looking at that all-too-familiar flashing lightning bolt...
MmmmMMMMmmm.... *zzzt*
and honestly... Twinkies? Whatever... Mt. Dew and the original Jolt cola (with the possible addition of their new Grape flavor) are all I need... and cigarettes.
and most programmers have great social skills... their scope is just "special" and almost a different culture and language than the rest of society's... like, instead of fat blonde jokes, we have Micro$haft and dumb end user jokes that make us wiggle.
Am I right or am I right?
I use every MHz they clock these puppies up to, and I like this new function because it will accomplish a lot, believe it or not.
Power consumption is reduced a great deal by shifting down the voltage, and a lot of battery life is added by the power down.
Having worked quite a bit with these new FC-PGA pIII's, I can tell you that from 400-600MHz the productivity scales very well.