The big tech companies want young (especially childless) workers because those workers will work insane hours in an effort to generate marginally more output than the person at the next open-plan table. Lots of other companies are more reasonable about expectations and environment.
I'm not sure which big tech companies you're talking about. What you say is not true at the one I work at (Google), nor is it true at the others that I have friends at (Apple, Microsoft, Amazon).
A doctor doesn't have to fully understand a dozen new diseases every year.
And a programmer doesn't have to understand a dozen new kinds of CS problems every year. In fact, it's pretty much the same old set of problems year after year in both cases. In medicine, the understanding of the problems and the tools change. In software, the context of the problems and the tools change.
Funny how no one cared about the stereotypes men would face for being so nerdy/geeky/whatever when computers weren't as profitable or such a big part of society.
Interestingly enough, in that day there were a lot more women in the field. In fact, in many companies female programmers significantly outnumbered men.
I'd like to have an effort targeted to this imbalance too. Google, anyone?
Why would Google care about that? Google cares about the lack of diversity in its own hiring pipeline because diverse teams are more productive and creative, and it just can't find enough non white/asian males who are top notch software engineers. So, this.
Why would Google care about gender imbalance in a profession that is not part of its business?
i dont see many white males represented in rap videos. i guess that is the reason that there is a under representation of white males in rap. we should start a change.org petition demanding that white males be equally represented in rap videos in order to grow the number of white males in rap
Well, if some rap-focused record label feels like they'd have more success with a broader representation of white males in the industry, they might start lobbying Hollywood to show more white male rappers, as well as looking to find and cultivate some directly.
Seems like it. Google used to at least try to follow "Do no evil" but seems to have completely thrown that away in the last year.
Just curious, do you actually not know that the motto was/is "Don't be evil", rather than "Do no evil"? Or do you know and just prefer the stronger form, even though it's inaccurate?
Because *everything* needs to be about achieving purported social justice agendas?
Nothing to do with that.
What it's about is enabling Google to hire a diverse workforce, because diversity increases productivity and creativity, without any lowering of the bar.
And "diversity" here doesn't just mean skin color or plumbing, but a variety of factors that result in a different life experience. For example, white guys from my alma mater are considered "diversity" hires by Google's recruiters, for the simple reason that it's a small commuter community college whose student body tends to have followed a different path in life than the typical Stanford CS grad. But obviously different skin color and plumbing is both correlated with and a cause of significantly different life experiences, so that, too.
And if you're lucky, you may yet grow up to be more mature than your 16 year old daughter.
Even she could do better than that, when she was 16. Look, if you'd like to have an adult discussion, don't throw out ludicrous arguments then try to claim they were sarcasm.
Ad revenue still comprises almost 90% of revenue, but it's ticking downward year by year.
In case it's not obvious, I mean ad revenues are declining as a percentage of total revenues, not in absolute terms. Said another way, ad revenues are growing at a healthy rate, but non-ad revenues are growing faster.
The ad business is the only one that consistently makes large amounts of money
Actually, there are several businesses that consistently make large amounts of money. Ad revenue still comprises almost 90% of revenue, but it's ticking downward year by year. Enterprise licensing (GSuite, mostly) is doing very well and growing. Android also consistently generates billions through the Play store. I think Google's cloud services are generating pretty good revenues, too, though they may not generate any net profits.
However, it is true that all of the things that make money are part of Google, not the "other bets".
Most of the purpose of having a corporation is to ensure that if it goes bankrupt it doesn't take the owners down with it. While it's unlikely that any of the "other bets" could generate such a large financial liability that it could actually sink Google, they might be able to put a dent in it. By separating the companies entirely, Alphabet enables any one of the subsidiaries to go belly up without harming the rest. Of course, they'll still have the option of using cash generated by Google to bail out failing subsidiaries if they want. Or to grow succeeding subsidiaries. Larry and Sergey being who they are, I doubt they'd use bankruptcy to avoid legitimate liability, but the change should serve to make shareholders a lot more comfortable with the other bets, knowing that any of them can be shut down cleanly at any time.
Is it to limit legal liability when one of these firms does something hugely illegal?
I don't think that actually works. When courts are pursuing criminal wrongdoing, they look for actual decisionmakers, regardless of corporate boundaries. Otherwise it would be trivial for corporations to deliberately set out to do illegal things, isolating the illegal acts in a subsidiary set up for that purpose, then just cutting it loose if it gets caught. For example, VW could have set up a subsidiary responsible for writing the emissions control software for their diesel vehicles.
Question: Do you still do keyword queries with Google? If so, that may be your problem. Try using natural language instead; the engine has evolved in that direction because that's what non-technical people ("all users", to a first approximation) do; they type in questions.
I find, subjectively, that Google's results are as good as they've ever been, or better, but only after I changed the way I write my queries. 20 years ago, what worked well was to find the right set of keywords, possibly making use of the tools to narrow the results in particular ways. That no longer works very well... but what does work quite well is typing questions in English. The combination of NLP, the knowledge graph, search personalization, etc. makes it work quite well.
See the quotes? Do you understand the concept of "sarcasm"?
Sorry, I thought you were making an argument. After re-reading your message in the tone of my 16 year-old daughter, complete with eyeroll, I can now respond appropriately: By ignoring it.
How ironic. After reading your post, I think the above statement perfectly describes you.
Skills in specific tools and technologies are almost irrelevant except for short-term work, in which case what you really want is a contractor, not an employee. If you're hiring someone you expect to keep for years, what matters is their foundational knowledge base, their intelligence and their attitude. A smart person with a good attitude and the necessary foundation can and will learn whatever specific tools and technologies are required -- and will be able to repeat the process as needed as your company's requirements and infrastructure evolve.
If a recruiter did something like that to me I'd blacklist them on the spot (I have in the past). It's a waste of time for everyone involved.
It's a waste of time only because the interviewers were stupid. Of course, a recruiter should know if the company is one of those foolish ones that hires skill rather than ability, and should not send people with ability but not the ultra-specific skills.
I think part of it is sometimes to reduce the competition internally in the company. What I mean is that at times I've seen the TECHNICAL people set these crazy requirements and then shrug it off when you tell them it's totally unrealistic.
'A's hire 'A's, 'B's hire 'C's and 'C's don't want to hire anyone.
The best people hire the best people, because they don't fear competition and indeed relish having someone who can run with them and challenge them. Mediocre people hire weak people who won't challenge them. Weak people prefer to hire no one, because anyone worse than them would clearly be unfit to even have the job.
You can look at the job requirements someone defines and place them in the scale.
Look at this from the perspective of a search engine trying to uprank the best content.
Well, that concept has legs. Let's try some more of this.
"Look at this from the perspective of a search engine trying to uprank the best content: if you don't spend half an hour giving them detailed feedback on the pages you visit, they can't uprank the best content; it is therefore perfectly legitimate to give you the choice of either complying or doxxing you and releasing your porn browsing habits."
Those words. I don't think they mean what you think they mean.
Yes, I agree with most of this. I have a little quibble, though...
If there's a +1 button on the bottom of the page, then you're getting a real content quality signal. Not everyone who likes the content will click, but no one who hates it will click.
If the goal is to find the highest quality content, the +1 button seems dubious. It's not measuring quality, it's measuring popularity. And it's a poor measure of popularity at that because of the heavy selection bias involved (most people aren't going to click it no matter how they feel about it.)
I'd say it's actually less biased towards measuring popularity than it is toward measuring agreement. Neither of those is exactly what you want, but it's still additional data about users' opinions of the articles. And it actually does contain an implicit measure of relevance and utility (which are the primary qualities sought): Most people who find it irrelevant or useless won't even get to the bottom, and so will never see the +1 button.
In other words, it's not really telling you much more than tracking who clicks on what links tells you.
This is wrong. It's an entirely separate decision based on entirely different actions. it may take some effort to figure out what it actually does and does not tell you, but it's definitely not the same thing.
That this stuff figures so much in search rankings at all is probably part of why Google's search results have been getting worse.
There's no way to respond to this. Your assessment is anecdotal and subjective. I'm aware of objective data regarding search quality, but can't share it.
The GP's point is that this will change, or at least that prices will drop to where it's negligible.
it would have to be ZERO to be acceptable to me.
When you have unlimited data which you use for everything else, the incremental cost of streaming music will be zero. It already is when you're at home.
Your fundamental problem here is that you're looking for something that doesn't yet exist
You are the one who said "it's not that hard", not me.
It's not. Choose something that's been working... which something doesn't much matter. Wait a few decades for science to actually figure out better answers.
My guess is that it won't hurt, but also won't help anyone.
It's already hurting. Pre-Brexit, the UK economy tracked pretty closely to the EU. After the Brexit vote, and even before Brexit has actually happened, the UK economy is already lagging the EU economy. Investment in the UK has slowed, many companies who are part of integrated cross-border supply chains are working to move out of the UK, etc.
Just the anticipation of Brexit is hurting. The real thing is going to hurt a lot more.
Slashdot Mirror
Plus as a middle aged worker I don't feel like I would be valued by a SV company.
FWIW, I'm 48, work for Google, and feel quite valued.
The big tech companies want young (especially childless) workers because those workers will work insane hours in an effort to generate marginally more output than the person at the next open-plan table. Lots of other companies are more reasonable about expectations and environment.
I'm not sure which big tech companies you're talking about. What you say is not true at the one I work at (Google), nor is it true at the others that I have friends at (Apple, Microsoft, Amazon).
A doctor doesn't have to fully understand a dozen new diseases every year.
And a programmer doesn't have to understand a dozen new kinds of CS problems every year. In fact, it's pretty much the same old set of problems year after year in both cases. In medicine, the understanding of the problems and the tools change. In software, the context of the problems and the tools change.
Funny how no one cared about the stereotypes men would face for being so nerdy/geeky/whatever when computers weren't as profitable or such a big part of society.
Interestingly enough, in that day there were a lot more women in the field. In fact, in many companies female programmers significantly outnumbered men.
Same reason feminists love to talk about how more other women should be coders but don't want to be coders themselves.
I know lots of feminists who are coders. Most of them are men, though.
According to a 2015 USC report, President Obama was kept abreast of efforts to challenge media's stereotypical portrayals of women...
This news piece talks of the absence of male teachers.
I'd like to have an effort targeted to this imbalance too. Google, anyone?
Why would Google care about that? Google cares about the lack of diversity in its own hiring pipeline because diverse teams are more productive and creative, and it just can't find enough non white/asian males who are top notch software engineers. So, this.
Why would Google care about gender imbalance in a profession that is not part of its business?
i dont see many white males represented in rap videos. i guess that is the reason that there is a under representation of white males in rap. we should start a change.org petition demanding that white males be equally represented in rap videos in order to grow the number of white males in rap
Well, if some rap-focused record label feels like they'd have more success with a broader representation of white males in the industry, they might start lobbying Hollywood to show more white male rappers, as well as looking to find and cultivate some directly.
Would that piss you off?
Seems like it. Google used to at least try to follow "Do no evil" but seems to have completely thrown that away in the last year.
Just curious, do you actually not know that the motto was/is "Don't be evil", rather than "Do no evil"? Or do you know and just prefer the stronger form, even though it's inaccurate?
Because *everything* needs to be about achieving purported social justice agendas?
Nothing to do with that.
What it's about is enabling Google to hire a diverse workforce, because diversity increases productivity and creativity, without any lowering of the bar.
And "diversity" here doesn't just mean skin color or plumbing, but a variety of factors that result in a different life experience. For example, white guys from my alma mater are considered "diversity" hires by Google's recruiters, for the simple reason that it's a small commuter community college whose student body tends to have followed a different path in life than the typical Stanford CS grad. But obviously different skin color and plumbing is both correlated with and a cause of significantly different life experiences, so that, too.
And if you're lucky, you may yet grow up to be more mature than your 16 year old daughter.
Even she could do better than that, when she was 16. Look, if you'd like to have an adult discussion, don't throw out ludicrous arguments then try to claim they were sarcasm.
Ad revenue still comprises almost 90% of revenue, but it's ticking downward year by year.
In case it's not obvious, I mean ad revenues are declining as a percentage of total revenues, not in absolute terms. Said another way, ad revenues are growing at a healthy rate, but non-ad revenues are growing faster.
The ad business is the only one that consistently makes large amounts of money
Actually, there are several businesses that consistently make large amounts of money. Ad revenue still comprises almost 90% of revenue, but it's ticking downward year by year. Enterprise licensing (GSuite, mostly) is doing very well and growing. Android also consistently generates billions through the Play store. I think Google's cloud services are generating pretty good revenues, too, though they may not generate any net profits.
However, it is true that all of the things that make money are part of Google, not the "other bets".
Most of the purpose of having a corporation is to ensure that if it goes bankrupt it doesn't take the owners down with it. While it's unlikely that any of the "other bets" could generate such a large financial liability that it could actually sink Google, they might be able to put a dent in it. By separating the companies entirely, Alphabet enables any one of the subsidiaries to go belly up without harming the rest. Of course, they'll still have the option of using cash generated by Google to bail out failing subsidiaries if they want. Or to grow succeeding subsidiaries. Larry and Sergey being who they are, I doubt they'd use bankruptcy to avoid legitimate liability, but the change should serve to make shareholders a lot more comfortable with the other bets, knowing that any of them can be shut down cleanly at any time.
Is it to limit legal liability when one of these firms does something hugely illegal?
I don't think that actually works. When courts are pursuing criminal wrongdoing, they look for actual decisionmakers, regardless of corporate boundaries. Otherwise it would be trivial for corporations to deliberately set out to do illegal things, isolating the illegal acts in a subsidiary set up for that purpose, then just cutting it loose if it gets caught. For example, VW could have set up a subsidiary responsible for writing the emissions control software for their diesel vehicles.
Question: Do you still do keyword queries with Google? If so, that may be your problem. Try using natural language instead; the engine has evolved in that direction because that's what non-technical people ("all users", to a first approximation) do; they type in questions.
I find, subjectively, that Google's results are as good as they've ever been, or better, but only after I changed the way I write my queries. 20 years ago, what worked well was to find the right set of keywords, possibly making use of the tools to narrow the results in particular ways. That no longer works very well... but what does work quite well is typing questions in English. The combination of NLP, the knowledge graph, search personalization, etc. makes it work quite well.
See the quotes? Do you understand the concept of "sarcasm"?
Sorry, I thought you were making an argument. After re-reading your message in the tone of my 16 year-old daughter, complete with eyeroll, I can now respond appropriately: By ignoring it.
You're part of the problem, not the solution!
How ironic. After reading your post, I think the above statement perfectly describes you.
Skills in specific tools and technologies are almost irrelevant except for short-term work, in which case what you really want is a contractor, not an employee. If you're hiring someone you expect to keep for years, what matters is their foundational knowledge base, their intelligence and their attitude. A smart person with a good attitude and the necessary foundation can and will learn whatever specific tools and technologies are required -- and will be able to repeat the process as needed as your company's requirements and infrastructure evolve.
If a recruiter did something like that to me I'd blacklist them on the spot (I have in the past). It's a waste of time for everyone involved.
It's a waste of time only because the interviewers were stupid. Of course, a recruiter should know if the company is one of those foolish ones that hires skill rather than ability, and should not send people with ability but not the ultra-specific skills.
I think part of it is sometimes to reduce the competition internally in the company. What I mean is that at times I've seen the TECHNICAL people set these crazy requirements and then shrug it off when you tell them it's totally unrealistic.
'A's hire 'A's, 'B's hire 'C's and 'C's don't want to hire anyone.
The best people hire the best people, because they don't fear competition and indeed relish having someone who can run with them and challenge them. Mediocre people hire weak people who won't challenge them. Weak people prefer to hire no one, because anyone worse than them would clearly be unfit to even have the job.
You can look at the job requirements someone defines and place them in the scale.
Well, that concept has legs. Let's try some more of this.
"Look at this from the perspective of a search engine trying to uprank the best content: if you don't spend half an hour giving them detailed feedback on the pages you visit, they can't uprank the best content; it is therefore perfectly legitimate to give you the choice of either complying or doxxing you and releasing your porn browsing habits."
Those words. I don't think they mean what you think they mean.
Yes, I agree with most of this. I have a little quibble, though...
If there's a +1 button on the bottom of the page, then you're getting a real content quality signal. Not everyone who likes the content will click, but no one who hates it will click.
If the goal is to find the highest quality content, the +1 button seems dubious. It's not measuring quality, it's measuring popularity. And it's a poor measure of popularity at that because of the heavy selection bias involved (most people aren't going to click it no matter how they feel about it.)
I'd say it's actually less biased towards measuring popularity than it is toward measuring agreement. Neither of those is exactly what you want, but it's still additional data about users' opinions of the articles. And it actually does contain an implicit measure of relevance and utility (which are the primary qualities sought): Most people who find it irrelevant or useless won't even get to the bottom, and so will never see the +1 button.
In other words, it's not really telling you much more than tracking who clicks on what links tells you.
This is wrong. It's an entirely separate decision based on entirely different actions. it may take some effort to figure out what it actually does and does not tell you, but it's definitely not the same thing.
That this stuff figures so much in search rankings at all is probably part of why Google's search results have been getting worse.
There's no way to respond to this. Your assessment is anecdotal and subjective. I'm aware of objective data regarding search quality, but can't share it.
The GP's point is that this will change, or at least that prices will drop to where it's negligible.
it would have to be ZERO to be acceptable to me.
When you have unlimited data which you use for everything else, the incremental cost of streaming music will be zero. It already is when you're at home.
it's not anywhere near the same thing, as I've said I tried it and I thought it sucked
In what way is radio better than Pandora?
Newer' isn't always 'better' and Millennials...
Don't play the "Millennial" card on me. Odds are decent that I'm older than you are.
Your fundamental problem here is that you're looking for something that doesn't yet exist
You are the one who said "it's not that hard", not me.
It's not. Choose something that's been working... which something doesn't much matter. Wait a few decades for science to actually figure out better answers.
It's easy.
It's wise to believe in something that's not demonstrably true?
You didn't read the post you replied to.
I don't think you read beyond the first sentence of my post. It was definitely not an anthropocentric view.
My guess is that it won't hurt, but also won't help anyone.
It's already hurting. Pre-Brexit, the UK economy tracked pretty closely to the EU. After the Brexit vote, and even before Brexit has actually happened, the UK economy is already lagging the EU economy. Investment in the UK has slowed, many companies who are part of integrated cross-border supply chains are working to move out of the UK, etc.
Just the anticipation of Brexit is hurting. The real thing is going to hurt a lot more.