I don't think that anybody is surprised that the top companies have that. The fact, however, is that most people won't work for top companies.
The vast majority will be lorded over by people with little or no training in their field. I don't think that a single engineer would complain about the opportunity to work hard, rise through the ranks, and get a title with some more money. My father did it and my grandfather did it.
That said, most companies aren't run like this. I know plenty of engineers who feel a bit miffed to find that the higher positions are being filled from outside of their company (the message being, time spent at another company is more valuable than time spent here), managed by people with little clue about their trade (we value our engineers, insomuch as they fill the pockets of our wealthy elite).
Go to Intel and find the CEO sitting in a slightly larger cubicle. Go to some companies, and see the management working in a separate hallway, into which engineers aren't allowed, flying first class when the engineers fly coach, using bleeding edge machinery while the engineers are working with 10 year old machinery.
It's no wonder that companies that understand these values do very well, whereas companies that don't fall short. That said, not everyone will make it to Google.
Yup. Every American who I've known who has lived in India has said that it was great and that they are considering retiring there. While I've never been (yet) I'm sure that when I'm in my 50's, I'll be considering a retirement there unless the situation changes. Right now I'm happy in the US though.
I was extremely intelligent in high school, but never did as well as I should have. I had a GPA in the top 1/3rd of the class, but never sat in the top 10 (close enough I suppose, top 30?).
I had top scores on many tests, however. Great SATs, great PSATs, top IQ scores, my SAT scores when I was 13 were high enough for admission to most state schools.
I went to university as an undergrad and finished in 3 years. This was largely due to testing out of most of my freshman year. I would have started as a sophomore had I gone in to test out of calculus. Instead, I went to some stupid dorm program. I never had much common sense I suppose. I would have graduated summa cum laude if I hadn't become ill my final semester and bombed a few classes as a result. Even with that, my GPA was enough for cum laude.
Of course, the school wasn't of stellar reputation (excellent excellent faculty though, when I drop names of my favorite professors there, I find that people at more reputable schools know them and are fond of them), and having less than a 4.0 and only having gotten to know one or two professors well, I find myself clawing my way into the sights of top PhD programs. I'm doing well now at the top of my class for my masters at an extremely reputable school, and even have managed to get the bulk of my requirements done so I can spend the semester thinking about PhD apps and working on research, which really has been what I've wanted all along.
I guess that the overarching message is that the system is imperfect, but so are students. Personally, I think that if high schools didn't spend so much time harping the same points at us, that students would learn faster and that universities wouldn't have to spray us with firehoses of information. Did it really take 6 years in elementary school to learn arithmetic? Was it really necessary to go over the American Revolution that many times? At the end of the day, how much of it was abridged so I would only learn the softball version of what I was supposed to learn? Also, why is if that I had to take sex ed (Family life in Virginia, we can't just say it's a class about sex... but really it should just be called "you're going to die if you have sex") and drug education ("drugs are bad, mmmk?")? I think that public school teachers should be mentors and all, but the cut and dried version that's offered in public schools offers all of the lip service and none of the values that parents should instill on their children anyway, most of whom go on to ignore the messages that those classes failed to proffer anyway.
In short, after being run through 13 years of nursery school, you're finally faced with being an adult. Everyone has to start playing a different game, and the students who made it to the top of the heap in high school find themselves in over their head, while folks like me found themselves in a distinctly different situation.
*Sigh* I just can't stop picking on this guy. This article is, however, garbage. Kern goes on to complain that his tuition dollars are funding the research of a professor whose teaching skills he feels a bit lacking.
So why was he kept on staff? His research was outstanding. My tuition dollars at work.
Apparently Kern fails to understand where the funding for this professor's research come from. It's a simple fact that that professor's research probably bring far more revenue into Smartypants U than his tuition does.
The system tries to drive people into engineering for a number of reasons. I won't enumerate those reasons because they aren't the point of my comment, and will only serve to divert conversation.
What is important is that the system drives people into careers that they are uninterested in. Not only that, but most engineers can look forward to careers of disdain and humiliation as students who did not have their aptitudes become their bosses, making more money than they do, ordering them around, and in general, holding them in disdain because they know that their underlings understand their trade better than they ever will.
When I returned to graduate school, an associate of mine who will remain nameless gave me the following advice. He told me to take a few business classes and jump into an MBA program. He himself holds multiple degrees in engineering, but never reveals this in conversation to business associates unless asked. While I won't give away his position, he makes far more money than most engineers (though, I do know engineers who make more).
I've chosen not to follow this advice, but I would never tell a student who has no interest in engineering to go into it. Science and Engineering are hard. If you don't actually enjoy them, you'll find yourself doing tons of work, only in order to find a career where you have to do tons more work. You can look forward to all of the things listed above.
If you think that the reason that US companies are outsourcing labor to India is because we have a shortage of engineers in the US, you are allowing yourself to be mislead. They're outsourcing to save money, and because they don't understand the value of producing something. They've been mislead into believing that a company can have value added merely by acting as middlemen in the process, rebranding technology to sell you a name. Most of these companies burn out quickly, the only people understanding what this does to the company running away with hefty sums of money as they enjoy the quick blossom of profit that can be realized by laying off everyone that you pay, while riding the last few products that they produced into the ground, and scurrying off the sinking ship.
In short. You've been lied to. Let your kids grow up to be what they want to be. I don't know a single engineer who is jumping into an MBA program who thinks that they'll take a pay cut for this. I certainly don't know any who think that it's a tougher career path. I do, however, know that about 1/5th of the people working at the company that I left (counting only those who were working there when I started, a scarce 4 years ago), to come to grad school, are doing just this.
Though you were modded funny, I think that you were serious.
Lets put this in perspective.
1) Dolphins that swim by ships radiate radar pings... so US can find them. 2) Enemy picks up radar pings, finding US ships. 3) ??? 4) Death of American sailors.
No, I don't think that they'll be doing that any time soon. Though I've heard that bright orange camouflage with reflectors placed on the helmet are going to be the next infantry uniform.
Case II: You buy some ephedrine, some lithuim batteries, some drano and some Acetone. You decide to whip up a batch of Crack. Are you allowed to do this? NO.
Actually, I'm a little fuzzy on this one. I'm not certain that whipping up crack is so much the problem as to what your intent is with it. If you were using the resulting chemical for non-biological scientific experiments (not sure what you'd do with crack, but hey) you probably would not be liable for criminal actions. Of course, it always helps to get a hazmat license to prove the fact before you begin your experiments.
You're also fuzzy on what's in crack. I think that what you're thinking of is "crank." Crack is made with cocaine.
It certainly is nicer working at a company that has both.
That said, 2 days ago I attended a talk and had the opportunity to speak to Werner Vogels, a VP at Amazon.com. He used to researcher here at Cornell. Everyone that I've spoken to whose worked there has had a nice experience.
Compare that to the familiar situation of someone who doesn't even understand what you do for a living slamming on you, getting paid more than you, getting better perks than you, and I'd rather go to Amazon any day. Wouldn't you? The median salary for my classmates is ~$75k, when they jump off to places like Google, and Amazon. I don't know much about Google's management structure from a personal perspective... but any company that gives you time to pursue independent research interests and work on journal publications, and recruits at conferences like AAAI can't be all bad, and can't have the typical managerial disdain for technical sorts.
You might be on to something. Of course, we've got management who don't think that they need a product these days, so, it balances out.
Personally, I'd rather be at a company where the programmers are respected, but they lack sales expertise, than a shop where they have tons of managers underpaying programmers and talking about outsourcing what little development is done inside the company.
Dude, you and your photonic chips can suck my voltage.
No, this isn't just a copper out, I'm serious. You photonic people seem to think that we're living in a dark age. If photonic processors were at all realistic, we all would have seen the light long ago.
Anyway, take your Star Wars chip and put it in a country where people have never seen George Lucas's masterpiece, Episode 1.
Mosix is a quick solution. It's not going to get you the most bang for your buck if you're trying to develop some amazing supercomputer, but it will certainly get you the biggest bang for your buck if you're interested in something you could put together in an afternoon and pump some good performance out of.
It's funny. This is the system that the guy wants. This is what he's looking for. It's not an "why not" answer, it's a system that does what he wants.
Not a single moderator gave me a point for this. Not to whine, but what kind of a clue bat does it take to get the CORRECT answers modded up at Slashdot?
#1 starts out fine, until you notice that his argument necessitates trusted computing, which has never really made it into vogue.
He should have kept it about things that "Default Permit" actually addressed when people were considering it, rather than hopping down a path that requires technology that is barely in use yet, as it if were at some point a direction that we had already considered.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's some fuel for the fire.
e s_inaccurate_results
http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Carbon_dating_giv
Wild Gorillas Impress With Their Tools
The Internet is just full of sickos, isn't it.
Listen to you with your one-upmanship.
Ya I'm a girl - do you have a problem with it, bub?
No, I don't.
I don't think that anybody is surprised that the top companies have that. The fact, however, is that most people won't work for top companies.
The vast majority will be lorded over by people with little or no training in their field. I don't think that a single engineer would complain about the opportunity to work hard, rise through the ranks, and get a title with some more money. My father did it and my grandfather did it.
That said, most companies aren't run like this. I know plenty of engineers who feel a bit miffed to find that the higher positions are being filled from outside of their company (the message being, time spent at another company is more valuable than time spent here), managed by people with little clue about their trade (we value our engineers, insomuch as they fill the pockets of our wealthy elite).
Go to Intel and find the CEO sitting in a slightly larger cubicle. Go to some companies, and see the management working in a separate hallway, into which engineers aren't allowed, flying first class when the engineers fly coach, using bleeding edge machinery while the engineers are working with 10 year old machinery.
It's no wonder that companies that understand these values do very well, whereas companies that don't fall short. That said, not everyone will make it to Google.
Yup. Every American who I've known who has lived in India has said that it was great and that they are considering retiring there. While I've never been (yet) I'm sure that when I'm in my 50's, I'll be considering a retirement there unless the situation changes. Right now I'm happy in the US though.
I had the opposite experience.
I was extremely intelligent in high school, but never did as well as I should have. I had a GPA in the top 1/3rd of the class, but never sat in the top 10 (close enough I suppose, top 30?).
I had top scores on many tests, however. Great SATs, great PSATs, top IQ scores, my SAT scores when I was 13 were high enough for admission to most state schools.
I went to university as an undergrad and finished in 3 years. This was largely due to testing out of most of my freshman year. I would have started as a sophomore had I gone in to test out of calculus. Instead, I went to some stupid dorm program. I never had much common sense I suppose. I would have graduated summa cum laude if I hadn't become ill my final semester and bombed a few classes as a result. Even with that, my GPA was enough for cum laude.
Of course, the school wasn't of stellar reputation (excellent excellent faculty though, when I drop names of my favorite professors there, I find that people at more reputable schools know them and are fond of them), and having less than a 4.0 and only having gotten to know one or two professors well, I find myself clawing my way into the sights of top PhD programs. I'm doing well now at the top of my class for my masters at an extremely reputable school, and even have managed to get the bulk of my requirements done so I can spend the semester thinking about PhD apps and working on research, which really has been what I've wanted all along.
I guess that the overarching message is that the system is imperfect, but so are students. Personally, I think that if high schools didn't spend so much time harping the same points at us, that students would learn faster and that universities wouldn't have to spray us with firehoses of information. Did it really take 6 years in elementary school to learn arithmetic? Was it really necessary to go over the American Revolution that many times? At the end of the day, how much of it was abridged so I would only learn the softball version of what I was supposed to learn? Also, why is if that I had to take sex ed (Family life in Virginia, we can't just say it's a class about sex... but really it should just be called "you're going to die if you have sex") and drug education ("drugs are bad, mmmk?")? I think that public school teachers should be mentors and all, but the cut and dried version that's offered in public schools offers all of the lip service and none of the values that parents should instill on their children anyway, most of whom go on to ignore the messages that those classes failed to proffer anyway.
In short, after being run through 13 years of nursery school, you're finally faced with being an adult. Everyone has to start playing a different game, and the students who made it to the top of the heap in high school find themselves in over their head, while folks like me found themselves in a distinctly different situation.
*Sigh* I just can't stop picking on this guy. This article is, however, garbage. Kern goes on to complain that his tuition dollars are funding the research of a professor whose teaching skills he feels a bit lacking.
So why was he kept on staff? His research was outstanding. My tuition dollars at work.
Apparently Kern fails to understand where the funding for this professor's research come from. It's a simple fact that that professor's research probably bring far more revenue into Smartypants U than his tuition does.
It seems that Kern got one thing from his engineering education
Kern = real good at math and science.
He now thinks that he can modify adjectives with other adjectives. Congratulations Kern, if nothing else, you now speak English like an engineer.
The system tries to drive people into engineering for a number of reasons. I won't enumerate those reasons because they aren't the point of my comment, and will only serve to divert conversation.
What is important is that the system drives people into careers that they are uninterested in. Not only that, but most engineers can look forward to careers of disdain and humiliation as students who did not have their aptitudes become their bosses, making more money than they do, ordering them around, and in general, holding them in disdain because they know that their underlings understand their trade better than they ever will.
When I returned to graduate school, an associate of mine who will remain nameless gave me the following advice. He told me to take a few business classes and jump into an MBA program. He himself holds multiple degrees in engineering, but never reveals this in conversation to business associates unless asked. While I won't give away his position, he makes far more money than most engineers (though, I do know engineers who make more).
I've chosen not to follow this advice, but I would never tell a student who has no interest in engineering to go into it. Science and Engineering are hard. If you don't actually enjoy them, you'll find yourself doing tons of work, only in order to find a career where you have to do tons more work. You can look forward to all of the things listed above.
If you think that the reason that US companies are outsourcing labor to India is because we have a shortage of engineers in the US, you are allowing yourself to be mislead. They're outsourcing to save money, and because they don't understand the value of producing something. They've been mislead into believing that a company can have value added merely by acting as middlemen in the process, rebranding technology to sell you a name. Most of these companies burn out quickly, the only people understanding what this does to the company running away with hefty sums of money as they enjoy the quick blossom of profit that can be realized by laying off everyone that you pay, while riding the last few products that they produced into the ground, and scurrying off the sinking ship.
In short. You've been lied to. Let your kids grow up to be what they want to be. I don't know a single engineer who is jumping into an MBA program who thinks that they'll take a pay cut for this. I certainly don't know any who think that it's a tougher career path. I do, however, know that about 1/5th of the people working at the company that I left (counting only those who were working there when I started, a scarce 4 years ago), to come to grad school, are doing just this.
Didn't Sony want to club MS to death with licensing costs? Something absurd like $130 per unit, right? I'd back the competing technology too.
Though you were modded funny, I think that you were serious.
Lets put this in perspective.
1) Dolphins that swim by ships radiate radar pings... so US can find them.
2) Enemy picks up radar pings, finding US ships.
3) ???
4) Death of American sailors.
No, I don't think that they'll be doing that any time soon. Though I've heard that bright orange camouflage with reflectors placed on the helmet are going to be the next infantry uniform.
Case II: You buy some ephedrine, some lithuim batteries, some drano and some Acetone. You decide to whip up a batch of Crack. Are you allowed to do this? NO.
Actually, I'm a little fuzzy on this one. I'm not certain that whipping up crack is so much the problem as to what your intent is with it. If you were using the resulting chemical for non-biological scientific experiments (not sure what you'd do with crack, but hey) you probably would not be liable for criminal actions. Of course, it always helps to get a hazmat license to prove the fact before you begin your experiments.
You're also fuzzy on what's in crack. I think that what you're thinking of is "crank." Crack is made with cocaine.
It certainly is nicer working at a company that has both.
That said, 2 days ago I attended a talk and had the opportunity to speak to Werner Vogels, a VP at Amazon.com. He used to researcher here at Cornell. Everyone that I've spoken to whose worked there has had a nice experience.
Compare that to the familiar situation of someone who doesn't even understand what you do for a living slamming on you, getting paid more than you, getting better perks than you, and I'd rather go to Amazon any day. Wouldn't you? The median salary for my classmates is ~$75k, when they jump off to places like Google, and Amazon. I don't know much about Google's management structure from a personal perspective... but any company that gives you time to pursue independent research interests and work on journal publications, and recruits at conferences like AAAI can't be all bad, and can't have the typical managerial disdain for technical sorts.
Hrmmm.
You might be on to something. Of course, we've got management who don't think that they need a product these days, so, it balances out.
Personally, I'd rather be at a company where the programmers are respected, but they lack sales expertise, than a shop where they have tons of managers underpaying programmers and talking about outsourcing what little development is done inside the company.
$10,000 for a finished project, eh? This doesn't strike anybody as a "complete ripoff" rather than a competition.
If, in 15 days, I write such an emulator, I will be selling it, rather than giving it away for $10,000.
Dude, you and your photonic chips can suck my voltage.
No, this isn't just a copper out, I'm serious. You photonic people seem to think that we're living in a dark age. If photonic processors were at all realistic, we all would have seen the light long ago.
Anyway, take your Star Wars chip and put it in a country where people have never seen George Lucas's masterpiece, Episode 1.
Fantasia would have been better if the Satyrs had genitalia?
That seems like a kind of nit-picky point.
Plenty of points to pick at... you chose that a childrens movie produced in the 60's or 70's didn't have full-frontal nudity.
Mosix is a quick solution. It's not going to get you the most bang for your buck if you're trying to develop some amazing supercomputer, but it will certainly get you the biggest bang for your buck if you're interested in something you could put together in an afternoon and pump some good performance out of.
It's funny. This is the system that the guy wants. This is what he's looking for. It's not an "why not" answer, it's a system that does what he wants.
Not a single moderator gave me a point for this. Not to whine, but what kind of a clue bat does it take to get the CORRECT answers modded up at Slashdot?
You might want to try Mosix.
http://www.mosix.org/
Just as Gallagher, a Sledge-O-Matic is exactly what you need.
They're only called boss at the really well-run companies. You've apparently never encountered a monkey in a business suit.
To the best of my knowledge, grog is just rum and water
#1 starts out fine, until you notice that his argument necessitates trusted computing, which has never really made it into vogue.
He should have kept it about things that "Default Permit" actually addressed when people were considering it, rather than hopping down a path that requires technology that is barely in use yet, as it if were at some point a direction that we had already considered.