It's possible for public policy to encourage you to have more or fewer children without an actual restriction. Right now each child you have is a tax deduction; if you got no deduction for a third child (maybe with an exception for multiple births, not fair to treat twins differently), people would have incentive to keep the baby production at a sensible level.
I've never met any parent that needed an incentive to have children. Get rid of the tax deduction entirely. Then we can do away with tax levies that support public schools. Public schools are failing anyway. Let parents pay the costs of private schools. That would provide disincentives to having large families and make private schools more competitive and lower the costs. Free Market economics work....
BTW, the Earth doesn't need us to SAVE it. Short of the human race developing a weapon that can explode planets, it will be here long after it is no longer suitable for human life. And then something else will develop and call it home. Environmentalism and population control is about saving the Humans.
They'd be obsolete month to month, as rates change not only due to the season, but due to the tiered pricing commonly used.
They would just need to provide the energy cost used as the basis. You see it all the time on appliances. (actually, in the US its required on new appliances)
1) They let their skill sets get out of date. We're hiring people currently skilled in java. I have seen some older people apply who only knew cobol, apparently, and weren't willing to learn enough java to pass a basic technical interview.
I've run into this problem lately. Those older programmers possibly let their skill sets get out of date by staying with the same company and providing stability to projects. You end up in a situation where the business stays with same tools, and you focus your efforts there. Then (like now) the economy comes along and takes your job away. A lot of companies won't interview a Windows C++ developer to do C#.NET work.
One of my hard learned lessons is that if you want to keep programming (rather than going into management), then you should change jobs every 2 - 3 years and look for opportunities working with new technologies.
Perhaps not getting sufficient authority is part of failed project management, but often it only turns out to be lacking when you need it.
Never take a job that is all responsibility and no authority. They have a name for that, scapegoat. Likewise, managing requires a carrot and a stick, if you lack either you aren't managing.
And if you tell me web development and not something in the applied engineering sciences, physics, mathematics, theoretical artificial intelligence, etc., then it explains how come you aren't having to spend a lot of time.
Or maybe he's just better at managing his time. Or that he sees the futility of staring blankly at the screen. Or maybe he understands his 'mind-muddling objective languages'. Or he's a more experienced developer and his job doesn't revolve around spitting out bits of code.
When I first started programming I couldn't understand why experienced developers padded their delivery dates so much. Years later I learned that they weren't simply coding. They were supporting existing systems, including interfacing with users and dealing with how those systems effected the business.
FWIW, I don't think I ever solved a coding problem by staring at the code. Once I reach an impasse, I change my focus to something else; mindless code cleaning, documentation, tackle another problem, or take a short break. I've had more solutions come to me in the shower in the morning after a nights sleep.
Given the stupid high cost of living in the Silicon Valley area, that pay scale sucks.
My first thoughts, without even looking to see what they pay, is if there so little available talent in Silicon Valley (one of the reasons they state for not being able to find good candidates), why don't they simply move? They appear to have 2 employees, an adviser and a website. They don't appear to manufacture a physical product and no indication of having a business location. Couldn't they shop other markets and move the company when they find one with a good supply of candidates?
It appears that the only thing they have is an add-on for an open source product and a pocket full of investor cash. Why be tied to a market with one of the most expensive costs of living in the nation when they could maximize investor equity in a cheaper market. But then again, I'm not a PHD candidate in Computer Science. My background is CIS, business, and economics...
When someone knows they know product X, I expect them to really know it.
Parent says he knows Python, not that he is a Python Expert or has any job related experience. Taking a course or teaching yourself the foundations of a language are sufficient for listing a skill on your resume. And I'd be willing to bet that even with a technology you know really well, a skilled interviewer could find something that would stump you. At least with any sufficiently complex technology.
So if you put something on the resume, I expect you to know it inside and out.
So if I put Microsoft Office on my resume, I should know how to use every feature? With your requirements, most people I have worked with, even some outstanding ones, would only have a technical skill or two on their resume. Some would not have any.
There is a difference between saying:
Technical Skills: C++, Java, Python, Perl
And
Technical Skills: Expert in Java and Python languages
Soft skills like the ability to make friends, work together without coming to blows, etc, are frequently valued more highly by employers than pure technical skills. Right or wrong (and I happen to think right), that makes being "linked in" an early proxy for those skills, and is in no way 'unfair' to those who can't make friends.
I have never gotten in a fight with a coworker. (came close once 20+ years ago working construction) I have had positions working with people from all levels of the business, CxO all the way down to warehouse laborers. I seem to be able to get along with all of them quite well, even some that have fairly abrasive personalities. At one job I used to get reviews with comments like "underestimates the influence he has with coworkers". And yet, I have a mere 25 connections on LinkedIn because I won't link just anybody and I don't actively pursue coworkers to add to my link collection.
So is that an indictment of my soft skills or am I simply selective about who I add and give access to my network? BTW, LinkedIn is about professional contacts, not friends. I'd likely never add a vendor rep to a friends list, but I might add one to my LinkedIn connections if they were professional enough to not spam all my other contacts.
This accident goes a long way towards showing how safe hydrogen is compared to the alternatives.
Unfortunately, I don't think that is the message that most people are going to get from this. Likely they'll get the more sensational message of; "All they were doing is changing trucks and the whole thing exploded. See how dangerous that stuff is!"
Once upon a time I was a strong supporter of hydrogen powered cars, but not so much any more. The problem is that you have the danger of high pressure along with the dangers of energy storage. Maybe a better system would be using excess wind power to create hydrogen that could be used in stationary power generation. That would level out the peaks and valleys of renewable power without trying to transport hydrogen and expect the uneducated to use it in daily life.
Try climbing up the steps into the cab at the fuel pump. You'll learn what sailors already knew.
And I remember driving through a fuel spill at an accident once. I don't know if it was simply the fuel, or if the light rain made it worse, but it was like driving on ice.
The nice thing about hydrogen is that if something leaks in your hydrogen-fueled car and there's a fire, it'll hopefully quickly burn through the metal and shoot straight up.
If the fire reaches the interior of your car, there is enough flammable material in there to burn regardless of the source. I know this from experience. And the only explosion was the windows shattering from the heat/pressure building inside the car. The roof rose 6-8 inches.
Erm. The person you quoted meant touching a live system in a non-user capacity. Developers do not need non-user access to production systems to shadow a user and understand how the system is used.
Most of the posts seem to assume the only reason to access a production system is to debug or make code changes. If that is the only exposure they have to the production system then they have a limited utility for the company they work for. They are simply coders.
Over the years I have seen a lot of reasons why developers should have not only access to production, but more access than a common user. I know you're thinking in terms of data and code, but as a developer I have had access to do whatever a user is expected to do. And I have done all the jobs, in production, that my users were doing.
I have also seen times where IT was expected to make data changes since it was the most efficient way for the business to fix a data problem. An easy example, one of your customer changes addresses and they have hundreds of blanket orders in your system. Many order processing systems store the ship-to address in the order header to allow for things like drop-ships. So it makes sense for IT to do a SQL update rather than Customer Service updating all those orders. There are just times when it's better for the business to 'back door' a data fix. But you can't leave that to the sysadmins, they know how the servers and network operate, they don't know how bits of data interact with each other. You need the developers to know where and when it is safe to make data changes.
All the reasoning I have seen for not allowing developers in production have to do with someone doing something stupid, bypassing procedures, or keeping them isolated from the users. Developers shouldn't be isolated. And if they regularly do stupid things with production systems or bypass procedures, then their managers should be discussing their future with the company with them.
Developers should have the access that makes them the most effective resource for the company. If that means helping the income producing departments fix data problems, then they should have the access to do it. Particularly since many data issues are the result of poor data validation in the applications. And if a developer can get a call on a system down at 2am, they should have access; to production to identify it, to dev/test to fix and test, and again to production to install a patch. There is nothing worse than being on call to fix problems you don't have the privileges to fix.
Its not like developers are getting away with something. With access come responsibilities.
Developers have no need of touching a live system.
Keeping developers off of production systems by removing their privileges isolates them from the users. While I know there are plenty of code monkeys out there that would prefer to be isolated in their cube, churning out code, you get a better product when users and developers interact. Developers need to see the users' work process so they can understand the challenges that the users have with a system.
Over the years I have saved myself more work by making suggestions on process flow than it has cost me dealing with over demanding users. And I'll bet there were enough labor savings in those improvements to pay my salary. Quite often system requirements get defined in a way that mirrors the current (or manual) process because the developers can't/won't provide useful input on what is possible with a new system.
It's nice to blame this on HR, and they certainly deserve some of it for the gauntlet that they have created. But honestly, if IT management didn't define the positions so narrowly, HR would pass along better candidates.
IT is one of the absolutely worst industries for pigeonholing, and your last job is the one that gets tattooed on your forehead, not the stuff you know (or think you know) the best.
This is one of the more concerning aspects of an IT career. Unfortunately, you don't realize it until you've been doing it for about 10 years and want to change jobs. Then you realize you're back at square one with fresh graduates because all the real work you did doesn't count.
The problem with this is that democracy requires an educated populace to succeed.
We require a skilled populace. That generally means educated, at least in their profession, but not necessarily a college degreed populace.
you generally aren't considered "educated" because public school education is so horrible.
College isn't a cure-all for bad education. Some of the worst professors I had were in the Universities after I graduated from community college. And the two best instructors I have ever had, one retired high school math teacher and one history teacher, were at that community college.
Nothing worse than taking a university course and having the PHD professor verifying topic details with you because you know more about the subject.
To be fair, the current staff already has knowledge of the company's business domain, practices, personnel, legacy projects, etc. that gives them value over a new hire.
That's all well and good, but new hires have skills outside of specific technologies as well. Those applicants can be completely discounted because they have Java rather than C# or PHP vs Perl. Project management, industry knowledge, and end user skills are viewed as inconsequential during the hiring process. Which is a shame because IT has a horrible reputation when it comes to managing projects and getting along with the rest of the business. Not to mention a fresh perspective can expose institutional blinders or introduce new techniques.
We all like to joke about job listings with skill requirements longer than a technology has existed, but the IT market has gotten super specialized over the last decade or so. Employers don't mind when it keeps staff from leaving, but they complain loudly when they can't find new hires with the exact skill set they want.
On the silly job posting front, I recently saw a job posting looking for experience with MS SQL 2005, 2008, and 2010. HR is going to have fun with that, I don't know anyone that would put SQL 2010 on their resume since there's no such thing. It's just what a few tech writers have dubbed SQL 2008 R2.
8:30 to 4:30? And they expect that 5 days a week? The bastards. While in the business world 8-5 is normal, with an hour for lunch. And during the 9 months teachers work there is a pretty liberal holiday schedule as well.
You talk about grading homework at home and professional training during the summer, are these mandated by ANY school district? Because although it has been many years since I was in school, it was pretty easy to tell some teachers assigned work they would need to grade at home and others skated comfortably on minimum effort. I had a high school teacher that never assigned homework and gave oral tests. And others that gave tests on scantron sheets. And still others that assigned work in class and graded while the students worked.
But even if those are unofficial expectations, it's not like it's anything unusual for a job. Working in IT I have had periods where 70 hour work weeks were required, for short periods during system upgrades. I had one director tell us that our salaries were computed on a 50 hour work week. And I have had a number of jobs where I was on call outside of work hours. I don't believe those are standard in the IT industry, but not exactly uncommon either. And IT is an industry where you continually learn new things or you drown. Tread water and you are barely employable if you should ever need to change jobs. And that is with a 50 work week schedule and employers that talk about training but never seem to pay for it.
I like to be supportive of teachers. I pay a lot of money into school districts and I will likely never have children in them. But the constant harping about low pay while turning in sub par results is getting old.
If teachers want to point out wasteful spending in their districts (like these buildings) to the community, that is great. And when they start producing educated students we can talk about performance raises. If they want to see what is holding them back, they should look to their own unions.
Grading on a curve is a poor way to determine if students are learning the required topics. It makes assumptions based on courses being taught the same way they always have. A better solution is to have predefined goals for a course with the purpose being for every student to meet the necessary goal. A-F grading is also a poor way to grade competency. A simple pass/fail is much better, and once a student masters the topic they should move on to the next one.
There are many factors that lead to effect size besides the teacher. Many people in education reform have latched on to the idea that every measurement taken on student progress can be attributed wholly to the teacher. This is absolutely not true.
You didn't read the LA Times article. There is evidence that there absolutely is some truth that a large degree of the student's success is dependent on the teacher. When one teacher at a school is in the top 10% for the district and another at the same school is in the bottom 10%, it is not likely external environment is the cause of the difference.
And a balanced system would incorporate merit raises or performance bonuses for good performers along with remedial training or dismissal for poor performers.
Most of the discussions on this thread are missing a major point: It is very difficult to define what makes an effective teacher. The LA Times released data based on standardized tests only, but the only place in life that standardized tests are applicable is in school. Granted it is the only objective data we have, but tests have been repeated found to be full of bias.
I don't think people here are missing the point. Most seem to be saying "don't bury the data". Standardized tests are a fact of life. I would be concerned if the consensus was that all hiring/firing and compensation was tied to this data, but that is no worse than ignoring it all together which is what seems to be the case now. At the very least the results should be propagated out to the teachers and they should be encouraged to share skills.
You say you don't want to teach the tests, you want to teach concepts. But if you were teaching the concepts, the students would pass the tests. There is a big disconnect between the results you think your teaching processes provide and what they actually do provide. That is why these 'defective' standardized tests were created in the first place.
It is not difficult to define what makes an effective teacher. It is difficult for those teachers to pass those skills to others and make them effective teachers as well.
1. The text book publishers have far too much say in education policy. hopefully non-profits creating open source text books will solve this problem.
Anybody with a computer and a laser printer can publish. If a district has a problem with influence from publishers, why not have their own staff develop textbooks that are suited to their lesson plans? A school district has pretty much every resource necessary for creating good textbooks.
For a generation I have heard; "More money for schools. Poor results are because we don't have money." There are all kinds of reasons schools want more money. Computers, we must have computers. We bought computers, they sat on the desks or in warehouses unused. A local district spent $2 million on astroturf for the high school football field, and a year later closed a school that focused on developmentally challenged children because it didn't have enough money. The average property tax levy for school districts in this area is 65% of the taxes collected. Many people are like me, they are willing to pay for results, but all we are getting from the money we have already given is excuses.
Well, when I graduated from med school, I lost my right to collective bargaining. I don't think there's anyone walking around talking about how physicians are direly oppressed members of the proletariat.
You would be wrong in that regard. Any time there is a debate over health care and HMOs there are articles about how doctors have to jump through hoops to earn a reasonable wage. Clinics are turned into patient mills where you spend all your time with nurses or waiting in a room and a doctor drops by for a 5 minute visit because they need high turnover to survive on what the HMO pays. Or if the discussion is malpractice you'll hear how doctors quit practicing because malpractice insurance is just too high. Or if Congress is late passing special benefits for Medicare, doctors will threaten to stop taking new Medicare patients because they aren't reimbursed enough money from the government.
To compete with wikileaks, they must become wikileaks. Things are looking up for the media.
How is this in any way like WikiLEAKs? This is a story about investigative journalism using data provided by the school district itself. WikiLeaks sits back and waits for insiders to leak controversial information. Self fashioned whistleblowers.
The problem with mainstream media is that they are TOO much like WikiLeaks. Rather than digging through facts with a critical eye, they wait for someone to bring a story to them.
Except that this was not really a mission critical system - it was a fault logging system in the maintenance department.
From the articles I have read the flight crew missed the flaps and slats on the take-off checklist. And the airplane's warning system was either non-functional or ignored. Both of those should have been sufficient to prevent the crash. A report last year said that human error contributed to the crash. The pilot and copilot died for this sin.
But a Reg article today says that the airline computer collected warnings and had the ability to stop the flight if there were too many warnings.
If the airlines' central computer was working properly a take-off after three warnings would not have been allowed, thereby averting the tragedy.
That puts the system in a flight control position making it a critical system. Also, businesses don't install these kinds of systems if the on-plane systems are sufficient. They are generally created to address a deficiency found by a regulating body.
One other point. The system that contains aircraft maintenance logs is a critical system even if it never communicates with a single aircraft since without it the planes could start falling out of the air or the airline could be shut down by a regulatory body. It's just not a flight critical system.
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It's possible for public policy to encourage you to have more or fewer children without an actual restriction. Right now each child you have is a tax deduction; if you got no deduction for a third child (maybe with an exception for multiple births, not fair to treat twins differently), people would have incentive to keep the baby production at a sensible level.
I've never met any parent that needed an incentive to have children. Get rid of the tax deduction entirely. Then we can do away with tax levies that support public schools. Public schools are failing anyway. Let parents pay the costs of private schools. That would provide disincentives to having large families and make private schools more competitive and lower the costs. Free Market economics work....
BTW, the Earth doesn't need us to SAVE it. Short of the human race developing a weapon that can explode planets, it will be here long after it is no longer suitable for human life. And then something else will develop and call it home. Environmentalism and population control is about saving the Humans.
They'd be obsolete month to month, as rates change not only due to the season, but due to the tiered pricing commonly used.
They would just need to provide the energy cost used as the basis. You see it all the time on appliances. (actually, in the US its required on new appliances)
1) They let their skill sets get out of date. We're hiring people currently skilled in java. I have seen some older people apply who only knew cobol, apparently, and weren't willing to learn enough java to pass a basic technical interview.
I've run into this problem lately. Those older programmers possibly let their skill sets get out of date by staying with the same company and providing stability to projects. You end up in a situation where the business stays with same tools, and you focus your efforts there. Then (like now) the economy comes along and takes your job away. A lot of companies won't interview a Windows C++ developer to do C# .NET work.
One of my hard learned lessons is that if you want to keep programming (rather than going into management), then you should change jobs every 2 - 3 years and look for opportunities working with new technologies.
Perhaps not getting sufficient authority is part of failed project management, but often it only turns out to be lacking when you need it.
Never take a job that is all responsibility and no authority. They have a name for that, scapegoat. Likewise, managing requires a carrot and a stick, if you lack either you aren't managing.
And if you tell me web development and not something in the applied engineering sciences, physics, mathematics, theoretical artificial intelligence, etc., then it explains how come you aren't having to spend a lot of time.
Or maybe he's just better at managing his time. Or that he sees the futility of staring blankly at the screen. Or maybe he understands his 'mind-muddling objective languages'. Or he's a more experienced developer and his job doesn't revolve around spitting out bits of code.
When I first started programming I couldn't understand why experienced developers padded their delivery dates so much. Years later I learned that they weren't simply coding. They were supporting existing systems, including interfacing with users and dealing with how those systems effected the business.
FWIW, I don't think I ever solved a coding problem by staring at the code. Once I reach an impasse, I change my focus to something else; mindless code cleaning, documentation, tackle another problem, or take a short break. I've had more solutions come to me in the shower in the morning after a nights sleep.
Given the stupid high cost of living in the Silicon Valley area, that pay scale sucks.
My first thoughts, without even looking to see what they pay, is if there so little available talent in Silicon Valley (one of the reasons they state for not being able to find good candidates), why don't they simply move? They appear to have 2 employees, an adviser and a website. They don't appear to manufacture a physical product and no indication of having a business location. Couldn't they shop other markets and move the company when they find one with a good supply of candidates?
It appears that the only thing they have is an add-on for an open source product and a pocket full of investor cash. Why be tied to a market with one of the most expensive costs of living in the nation when they could maximize investor equity in a cheaper market. But then again, I'm not a PHD candidate in Computer Science. My background is CIS, business, and economics...
When someone knows they know product X, I expect them to really know it.
Parent says he knows Python, not that he is a Python Expert or has any job related experience. Taking a course or teaching yourself the foundations of a language are sufficient for listing a skill on your resume. And I'd be willing to bet that even with a technology you know really well, a skilled interviewer could find something that would stump you. At least with any sufficiently complex technology.
So if you put something on the resume, I expect you to know it inside and out.
So if I put Microsoft Office on my resume, I should know how to use every feature? With your requirements, most people I have worked with, even some outstanding ones, would only have a technical skill or two on their resume. Some would not have any.
There is a difference between saying:
Technical Skills: C++, Java, Python, Perl
And
Technical Skills: Expert in Java and Python languages
Soft skills like the ability to make friends, work together without coming to blows, etc, are frequently valued more highly by employers than pure technical skills. Right or wrong (and I happen to think right), that makes being "linked in" an early proxy for those skills, and is in no way 'unfair' to those who can't make friends.
I have never gotten in a fight with a coworker. (came close once 20+ years ago working construction) I have had positions working with people from all levels of the business, CxO all the way down to warehouse laborers. I seem to be able to get along with all of them quite well, even some that have fairly abrasive personalities. At one job I used to get reviews with comments like "underestimates the influence he has with coworkers". And yet, I have a mere 25 connections on LinkedIn because I won't link just anybody and I don't actively pursue coworkers to add to my link collection.
So is that an indictment of my soft skills or am I simply selective about who I add and give access to my network? BTW, LinkedIn is about professional contacts, not friends. I'd likely never add a vendor rep to a friends list, but I might add one to my LinkedIn connections if they were professional enough to not spam all my other contacts.
Okay. Here, hold this can of gasoline. I'll just insert this fuse and light it.
You don't need a fuse to light a gas can. Just stick a lighter near the opening and the fumes will ignite.
This accident goes a long way towards showing how safe hydrogen is compared to the alternatives.
Unfortunately, I don't think that is the message that most people are going to get from this. Likely they'll get the more sensational message of; "All they were doing is changing trucks and the whole thing exploded. See how dangerous that stuff is!"
Once upon a time I was a strong supporter of hydrogen powered cars, but not so much any more. The problem is that you have the danger of high pressure along with the dangers of energy storage. Maybe a better system would be using excess wind power to create hydrogen that could be used in stationary power generation. That would level out the peaks and valleys of renewable power without trying to transport hydrogen and expect the uneducated to use it in daily life.
Try climbing up the steps into the cab at the fuel pump. You'll learn what sailors already knew.
And I remember driving through a fuel spill at an accident once. I don't know if it was simply the fuel, or if the light rain made it worse, but it was like driving on ice.
The nice thing about hydrogen is that if something leaks in your hydrogen-fueled car and there's a fire, it'll hopefully quickly burn through the metal and shoot straight up.
If the fire reaches the interior of your car, there is enough flammable material in there to burn regardless of the source. I know this from experience. And the only explosion was the windows shattering from the heat/pressure building inside the car. The roof rose 6-8 inches.
Erm. The person you quoted meant touching a live system in a non-user capacity. Developers do not need non-user access to production systems to shadow a user and understand how the system is used.
Most of the posts seem to assume the only reason to access a production system is to debug or make code changes. If that is the only exposure they have to the production system then they have a limited utility for the company they work for. They are simply coders.
Over the years I have seen a lot of reasons why developers should have not only access to production, but more access than a common user. I know you're thinking in terms of data and code, but as a developer I have had access to do whatever a user is expected to do. And I have done all the jobs, in production, that my users were doing.
I have also seen times where IT was expected to make data changes since it was the most efficient way for the business to fix a data problem. An easy example, one of your customer changes addresses and they have hundreds of blanket orders in your system. Many order processing systems store the ship-to address in the order header to allow for things like drop-ships. So it makes sense for IT to do a SQL update rather than Customer Service updating all those orders. There are just times when it's better for the business to 'back door' a data fix. But you can't leave that to the sysadmins, they know how the servers and network operate, they don't know how bits of data interact with each other. You need the developers to know where and when it is safe to make data changes.
All the reasoning I have seen for not allowing developers in production have to do with someone doing something stupid, bypassing procedures, or keeping them isolated from the users. Developers shouldn't be isolated. And if they regularly do stupid things with production systems or bypass procedures, then their managers should be discussing their future with the company with them.
Developers should have the access that makes them the most effective resource for the company. If that means helping the income producing departments fix data problems, then they should have the access to do it. Particularly since many data issues are the result of poor data validation in the applications. And if a developer can get a call on a system down at 2am, they should have access; to production to identify it, to dev/test to fix and test, and again to production to install a patch. There is nothing worse than being on call to fix problems you don't have the privileges to fix.
Its not like developers are getting away with something. With access come responsibilities.
Haven't you read the Mythical Monkey Month? That's way too many monkeys.
Developers have no need of touching a live system.
Keeping developers off of production systems by removing their privileges isolates them from the users. While I know there are plenty of code monkeys out there that would prefer to be isolated in their cube, churning out code, you get a better product when users and developers interact. Developers need to see the users' work process so they can understand the challenges that the users have with a system.
Over the years I have saved myself more work by making suggestions on process flow than it has cost me dealing with over demanding users. And I'll bet there were enough labor savings in those improvements to pay my salary. Quite often system requirements get defined in a way that mirrors the current (or manual) process because the developers can't/won't provide useful input on what is possible with a new system.
Tell that to HR and hiring managers...
It's nice to blame this on HR, and they certainly deserve some of it for the gauntlet that they have created. But honestly, if IT management didn't define the positions so narrowly, HR would pass along better candidates.
IT is one of the absolutely worst industries for pigeonholing, and your last job is the one that gets tattooed on your forehead, not the stuff you know (or think you know) the best.
This is one of the more concerning aspects of an IT career. Unfortunately, you don't realize it until you've been doing it for about 10 years and want to change jobs. Then you realize you're back at square one with fresh graduates because all the real work you did doesn't count.
The problem with this is that democracy requires an educated populace to succeed.
We require a skilled populace. That generally means educated, at least in their profession, but not necessarily a college degreed populace.
you generally aren't considered "educated" because public school education is so horrible.
College isn't a cure-all for bad education. Some of the worst professors I had were in the Universities after I graduated from community college. And the two best instructors I have ever had, one retired high school math teacher and one history teacher, were at that community college.
Nothing worse than taking a university course and having the PHD professor verifying topic details with you because you know more about the subject.
To be fair, the current staff already has knowledge of the company's business domain, practices, personnel, legacy projects, etc. that gives them value over a new hire.
That's all well and good, but new hires have skills outside of specific technologies as well. Those applicants can be completely discounted because they have Java rather than C# or PHP vs Perl. Project management, industry knowledge, and end user skills are viewed as inconsequential during the hiring process. Which is a shame because IT has a horrible reputation when it comes to managing projects and getting along with the rest of the business. Not to mention a fresh perspective can expose institutional blinders or introduce new techniques.
We all like to joke about job listings with skill requirements longer than a technology has existed, but the IT market has gotten super specialized over the last decade or so. Employers don't mind when it keeps staff from leaving, but they complain loudly when they can't find new hires with the exact skill set they want.
On the silly job posting front, I recently saw a job posting looking for experience with MS SQL 2005, 2008, and 2010. HR is going to have fun with that, I don't know anyone that would put SQL 2010 on their resume since there's no such thing. It's just what a few tech writers have dubbed SQL 2008 R2.
8:30 to 4:30? And they expect that 5 days a week? The bastards. While in the business world 8-5 is normal, with an hour for lunch. And during the 9 months teachers work there is a pretty liberal holiday schedule as well.
You talk about grading homework at home and professional training during the summer, are these mandated by ANY school district? Because although it has been many years since I was in school, it was pretty easy to tell some teachers assigned work they would need to grade at home and others skated comfortably on minimum effort. I had a high school teacher that never assigned homework and gave oral tests. And others that gave tests on scantron sheets. And still others that assigned work in class and graded while the students worked.
But even if those are unofficial expectations, it's not like it's anything unusual for a job. Working in IT I have had periods where 70 hour work weeks were required, for short periods during system upgrades. I had one director tell us that our salaries were computed on a 50 hour work week. And I have had a number of jobs where I was on call outside of work hours. I don't believe those are standard in the IT industry, but not exactly uncommon either. And IT is an industry where you continually learn new things or you drown. Tread water and you are barely employable if you should ever need to change jobs. And that is with a 50 work week schedule and employers that talk about training but never seem to pay for it.
I like to be supportive of teachers. I pay a lot of money into school districts and I will likely never have children in them. But the constant harping about low pay while turning in sub par results is getting old.
If teachers want to point out wasteful spending in their districts (like these buildings) to the community, that is great. And when they start producing educated students we can talk about performance raises. If they want to see what is holding them back, they should look to their own unions.
Grading on a curve is a poor way to determine if students are learning the required topics. It makes assumptions based on courses being taught the same way they always have. A better solution is to have predefined goals for a course with the purpose being for every student to meet the necessary goal. A-F grading is also a poor way to grade competency. A simple pass/fail is much better, and once a student masters the topic they should move on to the next one.
There are many factors that lead to effect size besides the teacher. Many people in education reform have latched on to the idea that every measurement taken on student progress can be attributed wholly to the teacher. This is absolutely not true.
You didn't read the LA Times article. There is evidence that there absolutely is some truth that a large degree of the student's success is dependent on the teacher. When one teacher at a school is in the top 10% for the district and another at the same school is in the bottom 10%, it is not likely external environment is the cause of the difference.
And a balanced system would incorporate merit raises or performance bonuses for good performers along with remedial training or dismissal for poor performers.
Most of the discussions on this thread are missing a major point: It is very difficult to define what makes an effective teacher. The LA Times released data based on standardized tests only, but the only place in life that standardized tests are applicable is in school. Granted it is the only objective data we have, but tests have been repeated found to be full of bias.
I don't think people here are missing the point. Most seem to be saying "don't bury the data". Standardized tests are a fact of life. I would be concerned if the consensus was that all hiring/firing and compensation was tied to this data, but that is no worse than ignoring it all together which is what seems to be the case now. At the very least the results should be propagated out to the teachers and they should be encouraged to share skills.
You say you don't want to teach the tests, you want to teach concepts. But if you were teaching the concepts, the students would pass the tests. There is a big disconnect between the results you think your teaching processes provide and what they actually do provide. That is why these 'defective' standardized tests were created in the first place.
It is not difficult to define what makes an effective teacher. It is difficult for those teachers to pass those skills to others and make them effective teachers as well.
1. The text book publishers have far too much say in education policy. hopefully non-profits creating open source text books will solve this problem.
Anybody with a computer and a laser printer can publish. If a district has a problem with influence from publishers, why not have their own staff develop textbooks that are suited to their lesson plans? A school district has pretty much every resource necessary for creating good textbooks.
For a generation I have heard; "More money for schools. Poor results are because we don't have money." There are all kinds of reasons schools want more money. Computers, we must have computers. We bought computers, they sat on the desks or in warehouses unused. A local district spent $2 million on astroturf for the high school football field, and a year later closed a school that focused on developmentally challenged children because it didn't have enough money. The average property tax levy for school districts in this area is 65% of the taxes collected. Many people are like me, they are willing to pay for results, but all we are getting from the money we have already given is excuses.
Well, when I graduated from med school, I lost my right to collective bargaining. I don't think there's anyone walking around talking about how physicians are direly oppressed members of the proletariat.
You would be wrong in that regard. Any time there is a debate over health care and HMOs there are articles about how doctors have to jump through hoops to earn a reasonable wage. Clinics are turned into patient mills where you spend all your time with nurses or waiting in a room and a doctor drops by for a 5 minute visit because they need high turnover to survive on what the HMO pays. Or if the discussion is malpractice you'll hear how doctors quit practicing because malpractice insurance is just too high. Or if Congress is late passing special benefits for Medicare, doctors will threaten to stop taking new Medicare patients because they aren't reimbursed enough money from the government.
To compete with wikileaks, they must become wikileaks. Things are looking up for the media.
How is this in any way like WikiLEAKs? This is a story about investigative journalism using data provided by the school district itself. WikiLeaks sits back and waits for insiders to leak controversial information. Self fashioned whistleblowers.
The problem with mainstream media is that they are TOO much like WikiLeaks. Rather than digging through facts with a critical eye, they wait for someone to bring a story to them.
Except that this was not really a mission critical system - it was a fault logging system in the maintenance department.
From the articles I have read the flight crew missed the flaps and slats on the take-off checklist. And the airplane's warning system was either non-functional or ignored. Both of those should have been sufficient to prevent the crash. A report last year said that human error contributed to the crash. The pilot and copilot died for this sin.
But a Reg article today says that the airline computer collected warnings and had the ability to stop the flight if there were too many warnings.
That puts the system in a flight control position making it a critical system. Also, businesses don't install these kinds of systems if the on-plane systems are sufficient. They are generally created to address a deficiency found by a regulating body.
One other point. The system that contains aircraft maintenance logs is a critical system even if it never communicates with a single aircraft since without it the planes could start falling out of the air or the airline could be shut down by a regulatory body. It's just not a flight critical system.