If I were to say "oh, this isn't surprising—most men engage in this kind of rape-y behavior, so it's not surprise," then that would be sexist. Because I'm explaining away one man's bad behavior by saying it's typical of all men, and hence unremarkable and not in need of correction.
The problem here is: this kind of behavior is entirely typical of men, and not of women. It is extremely, extremely rare to find a women who behaves in such a manner towards men (or women for that matter). You'll pretty much only find men acting this way. This doesn't mean it's typical of ALL men, however with women you simply don't need to worry about it. Women, however, have their own problems; the evil/crazy founder's wife in the story acted in a way that many (but again, not ALL) women act.
This doesn't mean that these behaviors don't need to be corrected, but there's no practical way to correct such behaviors. What are you going to do, go beat up the asshole guy on the bus? That's illegal. His actions weren't illegal, though they were horrible and distasteful. Or are you going to go tell the guy how rude he was? You think he gives a shit? He's an asshole. Same goes for the evil founder's wife; you can't use violence with her, because it's illegal. You can try to get her in trouble by publicly outing her, but as Ms. Horvath is probably going to find out, this will very negatively impact your career since America hates whistleblowers. Or you can tell her how bad and hurtful her actions are, but again, you think she gives a shit? She's evil. The people who exhibit these bad behaviors are sociopaths. They have no conscience, and don't care about who their actions hurt. There's really nothing we can do about them in modern society because violence is illegal; in the really-old days, they'd be shunned from their tribes if they pissed off too many people, or pushed off a cliff or something if they fucked with the wrong person. But the smarter ones are really crafty, which is why they get into high-up positions, like Governor of New Jersey or Vice President of the US, and these days there's just no way to deal with them except to avoid them whenever possible.
Anyway, the point I'm getting to is that there's nothing wrong IMO with pointing out that a certain behavior is only done by a certain group, even if it's only a minority of that group. All groups have their Achilles' Heels.
Wow, that's quite a post. Usually companies just say all the accusations are false and try to sweep things under the rug. They basically corroborated most of her story, particularly the part about the founder and his evil wife, which IMO was the most important part. Her other complaints were mostly lame (esp. the hula hoop thing), but the part about the founder's wife, the founder's behavior, demanding her partner to resign, etc., were all quite horrible and rung quite true.
No, I think he's saying that all groups of people are natural enemies of each other. You can replace "men" and "women" with any other group names:
Of course it's in white peoples' interest to keep black people subordinate so they can be more easily exploited Of course it's in business owners' interest to keep immigrants subordinate so they can be more easily exploited Of course it's in politicians' interest to keep citizens subordinate so they can be more easily exploited
These "older standards" never existed anyway. Women have long been employed in various jobs, namely schoolteaching and nursing, as well as various other menial jobs like maids. Middle-class and up women who got married did tend to become housewifes, particularly during the US's postwar economic boom, but poorer women and women who never got married (derided as "spinsters") generally had to work for a living, even during the bad old days when women weren't allowed to work at many good jobs. Don't forget, even during the 60s or so, telephone operators were generally women. Not to mention secretaries. The idea that women generally stayed home to raise kids is not only sexist, but completely false.
Sorry to reply to my own post, but since Slashdot is too shitty to let me edit my own post....
To add to the "women are caring and nurturing" BS, think about this: how often have you heard of evil step-mothers? It's so common it's a huge stereotype. Now, how often have you heard of evil step-fathers? I don't think I've ever heard of that.
That's a bunch of crap. I'm pretty sure I've seen studies showing fathers are generally more nurturing and caring than mothers (the whole "women are nurturing and caring" idea seems to me to be a completely false stereotype; maybe some women are like that, but not the majority). And in the pre-agriculture days, it was the women who did the gathering; men did the hunting.
There was no sexism at all, what my reading of the Techcrunch article which only presented Horvath's side of events. Her allegations of sexism are ridiculous and completely unfounded.
Mind you, I completely believe her version of the events as presented here. It's just that they're not "sexism", and I resent that card being thrown for things where it's not appropriate. It's just like how certain people will scream "racism!!!" for things which aren't racism, such as disliking Obama: "If you don't love Obama, you must be a racist!"
The real situation is that GitHub is simply a horrible place to work, and one of its founders has an evil and manipulative wife who clearly doesn't want any other women working there. This is the real problem with women in the workforce. Men aren't the problem, it's other women who are jealous and controlling. They don't want other women working with them, and when they do, these women want to be the ones in control of things, and direct all their energy to building alliances and backstabbing potential rivals. Not all women are like this; I don't think Horvath is, however, a certain percentage of women are, and it ruins it for everyone. It only takes 10% of female workers to be this poisonous to give them all a horrible reputation. Just ask any normal, non-backstabbing working woman you know: does she have more problems with the men at her workplace, or the women?
The only remotely "sexist" thing presented here was men gawking at a couple of female employees using hula hoops. That's not sexist, that's human nature. Geeky guys who don't get any action are naturally going to gawk at women who display themselves like that. Did the man say inappropriate things? Touch or grope them? Harass them by asking them out and not taking no for an answer? Or did they just look at them? Staring at someone isn't wrong when they're intentionally putting themselves on display. Did the men gawk at these women when they were just sitting in their cubicles, or only when they were making a spectacle of themselves? I don't see the problem here. We have a workplace that has very few female employees and a bunch of socially-awkward men who don't get out much and probably don't get laid much; WTF do you expect when some girls gyrate in front of these men? Did these women even complain about the gawking? Did they gawk at Horvath? I suspect the answer to that is "no", since she wasn't doing hula hoops in front of them.
This all sounds like typical small-company bullshit, with an evil boss's wife thrown in, and a completely incompetent HR department. The problem with this last part is that I don't think there's any small company in America with a competent HR department.
This story is a good illustration, IMO, of the idea that you shouldn't get too emotionally tied to any job, especially at small companies. Small companies, in my experience, are a total mixed bag; some can be OK, others are just a horror show, with harassment and other bad behavior the norm. There aren't many consequences for harassment at small companies (it's hard to prove, and they don't have deep pockets to sue for), so you should be ready to pack up and switch jobs at a moment's notice. Big companies are much better in this regard; you probably won't have anyone hula-hooping at them, harassment is usually dealt with far more strictly, etc., but the work quality usually sucks compared to small places so that's the trade-off.
It depends on what the non-engineer is doing, or trying to do. If for instance they're a PHB and making technical decisions about things they don't understand, it's perfectly OK to belittle them.
It's a self-correcting problem. America doesn't need to help gifted students, and should continue its present course, Meanwhile, countries like Japan, Korea, and Germany will avoid mainstreaming and will fast-track the smarter kids. In a generation or two, we'll see who has the better economy.
With the cost of new batteries, I really wonder if it's worth it to bother with any of this stuff any more. You can get a new battery from Autozone now for $50-75 with a 3-year guarantee (if it fails in that time, they give you a replacement with a prorated discount). This worked out pretty well for me when I lived in Arizona, since batteries there never last more than 18 months.
Car batteries are not "still viable" if they're used. They need to just be recycled; there's already very effective recycling programs for them which recover all the lead and manufacture new batteries from it.
Car batteries are useless after 18 months to 5 years or so, depending on the environment. In Phoenix, do not expect a car battery to last longer than 18 months. In colder places, they last longer, but still nowhere near 15 years. And when car starting batteries die, they usually die catastrophically; they won't hold any significant charge. Your car starts OK day after day, but then one day it doesn't, and only has enough power to power the basic accessories.
Luckily, TFA is apparently about Li-ion batteries, not lead-acid car batteries. Because reusing the latter would be absolutely stupid.
Exactly. If no one bids on anything (because the consequences are too grave), then the government will be forced to change its procurement procedures. Doing things the way they're working now obviously isn't working, and the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result, yet that's exactly what most people seem to want to do.
Unfortunately there's no simple, black-and-white answer to this question.
Ideally, in a good democratic society, people would decide democratically what the minimum "bar" is, and anything below that is considered neglect. We already do this to an extent in the US, with "CPS" in many states taking kids away if they're found to be abused or neglected. Usually, though, CPS is criticized for allowing too much abuse before they intervene (or just being plain incompetent, or overworked/understaffed, etc.), rather than being too heavy-handed (though this happens too occasionally). Societies do have a right to decide on minimum levels of acceptable conduct, and punish people who don't conform ("disturbing the peace" laws are an example of this). The main problem we have is our democracy isn't very good (too much corruption, bad voting systems), so the actions of the government can't really be assumed to accurately reflect the will of the people.
How about denying medical insurance coverage to those that fail to get vaccinated, unless they can demonstrate that they are a member of a recognized religious congregation that specifically is against vaccination as a part of church dogma?
No. I'm sorry, I don't see this as a valid excuse. Freedom of religion has gone too far; if you can't properly take care of your kids, they should be taken away from you.
The problem with privatization is that it ends up being worse than having the government do it directly, because there's no consequences for failure. Several companies bid on the project, but they low-ball the bid to win the project because the lowest bidder almost always wins. But then the project costs much more, and somehow the government is on the hook for these cost overruns, instead of the contractor being responsible (since they did, after all, bid a certain amount). The problem here is the government agrees to contracts which allow enormous overruns at the government's expense. If the contractor fails, what's the penalty? At worst, they get dismissed (and keep all the cash) and someone new takes over.
It's simple: make the bids binding, and if the contractor fails to meet the terms, they pay to get it right, and if they can't, they forfeit their company and the officers are all personally responsible.
There's a phrase that might apply here: "None of us is as dumb as all of us."
The fix isn't impossible, but it's difficult because of entrenched moneyed interests and people who support these because they blame the "other side" for all the problems. The conservatives blame the liberals, the "gay agenda", etc. for all the nation's problems, and the liberals blame the conservatives, the Koch Brothers, etc. for all the nation's problems. Neither of them blame the leaders on their own political side for the problems. The fix is to toss out all the leaders (on both sides), and rework the government to prevent the same things from happening again, such as by overturning Citizens United and writing new legislation to get money out of politics, to mandate a more fair voting system (proportional voting or Condorcet method or approval voting etc.), and likely a whole new Constitution. Good luck getting changes that large pushed through though. You can't even do the first two points because neither "side" is in favor of it (it would drastically reduce their power), and the last one is nearly impossible without a full revolution.
This is why countries never tend to get better, they always degenerate, until there's some giant war or bloody revolution to wipe the slate clean and start over. Think about it: when was the last time you heard of a country reforming itself voluntarily and getting much better, without a lot of violence? Look at the Roman Empire for instance: it decayed and then collapsed. It took Europe 1000 years to get back to that level of civilization and technology. Look at European countries now; sure, they're great places to live for the most part, but you can thank WWII for that.
This is exactly what I saw, and I'm just married without any kids. Huge monthly fees (not as high as yours though, remember I don't have kids), and ridiculously high deductibles. And I'm in a blue state. I went back to work in corporate America, but I'm a contractor so I don't get free healthcare.
It's not that research labs would hire coders to look for cures for cancer (they wouldn't), the problem is that people go into IT or programming professions, rather than getting degrees in biochemistry (or whatever is best for doing cancer research). And the reason people do this is obvious as you pointed out: the unemployment rate is very high, and that's for PhDs, who are precisely the people you want doing important research like that. It simply doesn't pay to spend years of your life in school getting multiple degrees, (and doing doctoral research that your professor takes all the credit for) and then find that you can't get any kind of job when you're done, and certainly not one that'll pay for all those hefty student loans you've racked up over the last 8 years. Meanwhile, all your friends who went into CS and got out after 4-5 years are getting paid 6 figures and have little trouble finding jobs.
the problem is the original article is talking about the supposedly best and the brightest of IT... seen as leaders of their profession. When many of the leaders are simply out to make as much $$$$ as fast as they can many others adopt the same mentality. There is little movement of working to help for the greater good of society. It's how much can I get and how quickly can I get it?
This isn't just IT, this is everywhere in American society these days. Our own political leaders are no different; they're obviously corrupt to the core, and only in it for the money and power, and don't do anything to actually improve the state of our society, which is why our roads are falling apart and our bridges collapsing, while our taxes are sky-high (in the areas where good paying jobs exist). Basically, our society is just falling apart, because no one really cares any more, and why should they? Our leaders don't, and our citizens are too dumb to elect decent leaders or hold them accountable.
I haven't read the article, but there's several reasons where doing things in NJ is ridiculously expensive: 1) property taxes are the highest in the nation. Alcatel-Lucent-Bell Labs is actually demolishing parts of its historic Murray Hill campus to reduce square footage, solely to reduce their property tax bill. Other companies have left the state, or threatened to leave and gotten special tax breaks, because of property taxes. 2) it's right next to NYC, and lots of New Yorkers have been moving over because Manhattan is so expensive these days and northern NJ is commutable by train and bus. This has driven up housing costs (which are then again compounded by higher property taxes). 3) corruption. This is probably one of the most corrupt places in the country, just behind Chicago.
Tesla already has at least one showroom in New Jersey to show their cars. There's one near me in the Short Hills Mall, and I'm pretty sure at least one other mall in northern NJ has a showroom too.
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If I were to say "oh, this isn't surprising—most men engage in this kind of rape-y behavior, so it's not surprise," then that would be sexist. Because I'm explaining away one man's bad behavior by saying it's typical of all men, and hence unremarkable and not in need of correction.
The problem here is: this kind of behavior is entirely typical of men, and not of women. It is extremely, extremely rare to find a women who behaves in such a manner towards men (or women for that matter). You'll pretty much only find men acting this way. This doesn't mean it's typical of ALL men, however with women you simply don't need to worry about it. Women, however, have their own problems; the evil/crazy founder's wife in the story acted in a way that many (but again, not ALL) women act.
This doesn't mean that these behaviors don't need to be corrected, but there's no practical way to correct such behaviors. What are you going to do, go beat up the asshole guy on the bus? That's illegal. His actions weren't illegal, though they were horrible and distasteful. Or are you going to go tell the guy how rude he was? You think he gives a shit? He's an asshole. Same goes for the evil founder's wife; you can't use violence with her, because it's illegal. You can try to get her in trouble by publicly outing her, but as Ms. Horvath is probably going to find out, this will very negatively impact your career since America hates whistleblowers. Or you can tell her how bad and hurtful her actions are, but again, you think she gives a shit? She's evil. The people who exhibit these bad behaviors are sociopaths. They have no conscience, and don't care about who their actions hurt. There's really nothing we can do about them in modern society because violence is illegal; in the really-old days, they'd be shunned from their tribes if they pissed off too many people, or pushed off a cliff or something if they fucked with the wrong person. But the smarter ones are really crafty, which is why they get into high-up positions, like Governor of New Jersey or Vice President of the US, and these days there's just no way to deal with them except to avoid them whenever possible.
Anyway, the point I'm getting to is that there's nothing wrong IMO with pointing out that a certain behavior is only done by a certain group, even if it's only a minority of that group. All groups have their Achilles' Heels.
Sometime you have to tear things down and start all over in order to rebuild something better.
Wow, that's quite a post. Usually companies just say all the accusations are false and try to sweep things under the rug. They basically corroborated most of her story, particularly the part about the founder and his evil wife, which IMO was the most important part. Her other complaints were mostly lame (esp. the hula hoop thing), but the part about the founder's wife, the founder's behavior, demanding her partner to resign, etc., were all quite horrible and rung quite true.
No, I think he's saying that all groups of people are natural enemies of each other. You can replace "men" and "women" with any other group names:
Of course it's in white peoples' interest to keep black people subordinate so they can be more easily exploited
Of course it's in business owners' interest to keep immigrants subordinate so they can be more easily exploited
Of course it's in politicians' interest to keep citizens subordinate so they can be more easily exploited
These "older standards" never existed anyway. Women have long been employed in various jobs, namely schoolteaching and nursing, as well as various other menial jobs like maids. Middle-class and up women who got married did tend to become housewifes, particularly during the US's postwar economic boom, but poorer women and women who never got married (derided as "spinsters") generally had to work for a living, even during the bad old days when women weren't allowed to work at many good jobs. Don't forget, even during the 60s or so, telephone operators were generally women. Not to mention secretaries. The idea that women generally stayed home to raise kids is not only sexist, but completely false.
Sorry to reply to my own post, but since Slashdot is too shitty to let me edit my own post....
To add to the "women are caring and nurturing" BS, think about this: how often have you heard of evil step-mothers? It's so common it's a huge stereotype. Now, how often have you heard of evil step-fathers? I don't think I've ever heard of that.
That's a bunch of crap. I'm pretty sure I've seen studies showing fathers are generally more nurturing and caring than mothers (the whole "women are nurturing and caring" idea seems to me to be a completely false stereotype; maybe some women are like that, but not the majority). And in the pre-agriculture days, it was the women who did the gathering; men did the hunting.
There was no sexism at all, what my reading of the Techcrunch article which only presented Horvath's side of events. Her allegations of sexism are ridiculous and completely unfounded.
Mind you, I completely believe her version of the events as presented here. It's just that they're not "sexism", and I resent that card being thrown for things where it's not appropriate. It's just like how certain people will scream "racism!!!" for things which aren't racism, such as disliking Obama: "If you don't love Obama, you must be a racist!"
The real situation is that GitHub is simply a horrible place to work, and one of its founders has an evil and manipulative wife who clearly doesn't want any other women working there. This is the real problem with women in the workforce. Men aren't the problem, it's other women who are jealous and controlling. They don't want other women working with them, and when they do, these women want to be the ones in control of things, and direct all their energy to building alliances and backstabbing potential rivals. Not all women are like this; I don't think Horvath is, however, a certain percentage of women are, and it ruins it for everyone. It only takes 10% of female workers to be this poisonous to give them all a horrible reputation. Just ask any normal, non-backstabbing working woman you know: does she have more problems with the men at her workplace, or the women?
The only remotely "sexist" thing presented here was men gawking at a couple of female employees using hula hoops. That's not sexist, that's human nature. Geeky guys who don't get any action are naturally going to gawk at women who display themselves like that. Did the man say inappropriate things? Touch or grope them? Harass them by asking them out and not taking no for an answer? Or did they just look at them? Staring at someone isn't wrong when they're intentionally putting themselves on display. Did the men gawk at these women when they were just sitting in their cubicles, or only when they were making a spectacle of themselves? I don't see the problem here. We have a workplace that has very few female employees and a bunch of socially-awkward men who don't get out much and probably don't get laid much; WTF do you expect when some girls gyrate in front of these men? Did these women even complain about the gawking? Did they gawk at Horvath? I suspect the answer to that is "no", since she wasn't doing hula hoops in front of them.
This all sounds like typical small-company bullshit, with an evil boss's wife thrown in, and a completely incompetent HR department. The problem with this last part is that I don't think there's any small company in America with a competent HR department.
This story is a good illustration, IMO, of the idea that you shouldn't get too emotionally tied to any job, especially at small companies. Small companies, in my experience, are a total mixed bag; some can be OK, others are just a horror show, with harassment and other bad behavior the norm. There aren't many consequences for harassment at small companies (it's hard to prove, and they don't have deep pockets to sue for), so you should be ready to pack up and switch jobs at a moment's notice. Big companies are much better in this regard; you probably won't have anyone hula-hooping at them, harassment is usually dealt with far more strictly, etc., but the work quality usually sucks compared to small places so that's the trade-off.
It depends on what the non-engineer is doing, or trying to do. If for instance they're a PHB and making technical decisions about things they don't understand, it's perfectly OK to belittle them.
It's a self-correcting problem. America doesn't need to help gifted students, and should continue its present course, Meanwhile, countries like Japan, Korea, and Germany will avoid mainstreaming and will fast-track the smarter kids. In a generation or two, we'll see who has the better economy.
With the cost of new batteries, I really wonder if it's worth it to bother with any of this stuff any more. You can get a new battery from Autozone now for $50-75 with a 3-year guarantee (if it fails in that time, they give you a replacement with a prorated discount). This worked out pretty well for me when I lived in Arizona, since batteries there never last more than 18 months.
Car batteries are not "still viable" if they're used. They need to just be recycled; there's already very effective recycling programs for them which recover all the lead and manufacture new batteries from it.
Car batteries are useless after 18 months to 5 years or so, depending on the environment. In Phoenix, do not expect a car battery to last longer than 18 months. In colder places, they last longer, but still nowhere near 15 years. And when car starting batteries die, they usually die catastrophically; they won't hold any significant charge. Your car starts OK day after day, but then one day it doesn't, and only has enough power to power the basic accessories.
Luckily, TFA is apparently about Li-ion batteries, not lead-acid car batteries. Because reusing the latter would be absolutely stupid.
Exactly. If no one bids on anything (because the consequences are too grave), then the government will be forced to change its procurement procedures. Doing things the way they're working now obviously isn't working, and the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result, yet that's exactly what most people seem to want to do.
Well there's still ads. He didn't say anything about blocking ads, just tracking and content. Of course, I'm not sure why you'd want to do that.
Unfortunately there's no simple, black-and-white answer to this question.
Ideally, in a good democratic society, people would decide democratically what the minimum "bar" is, and anything below that is considered neglect. We already do this to an extent in the US, with "CPS" in many states taking kids away if they're found to be abused or neglected. Usually, though, CPS is criticized for allowing too much abuse before they intervene (or just being plain incompetent, or overworked/understaffed, etc.), rather than being too heavy-handed (though this happens too occasionally). Societies do have a right to decide on minimum levels of acceptable conduct, and punish people who don't conform ("disturbing the peace" laws are an example of this). The main problem we have is our democracy isn't very good (too much corruption, bad voting systems), so the actions of the government can't really be assumed to accurately reflect the will of the people.
How about denying medical insurance coverage to those that fail to get vaccinated, unless they can demonstrate that they are a member of a recognized religious congregation that specifically is against vaccination as a part of church dogma?
No. I'm sorry, I don't see this as a valid excuse. Freedom of religion has gone too far; if you can't properly take care of your kids, they should be taken away from you.
Again, this should all be covered by the company that wins the bid. If they don't like it, they shouldn't bid on the contract.
>because most of the requirements are out of date,
Contractor's fault. If the requirements are impossible, tell the customer and don't bid.
>were written by somone who had no idea what they were asking for
Same as above.
>or are missing critical pieces of functionality or details.
Same as above.
>Then you find out you need to integrate with a 35 year old Wang mainframe that runs some weird esoteric algorithm that no one alive understands.
If that's in the contract you signed, you need to do it. If it isn't in the contract, don't do it, or re-bid for that portion.
This would all be much simpler if both parties simply adhered to the terms of the contract. If the terms are unrealistic or impossible, don't bid.
The problem with privatization is that it ends up being worse than having the government do it directly, because there's no consequences for failure. Several companies bid on the project, but they low-ball the bid to win the project because the lowest bidder almost always wins. But then the project costs much more, and somehow the government is on the hook for these cost overruns, instead of the contractor being responsible (since they did, after all, bid a certain amount). The problem here is the government agrees to contracts which allow enormous overruns at the government's expense. If the contractor fails, what's the penalty? At worst, they get dismissed (and keep all the cash) and someone new takes over.
It's simple: make the bids binding, and if the contractor fails to meet the terms, they pay to get it right, and if they can't, they forfeit their company and the officers are all personally responsible.
There's a phrase that might apply here: "None of us is as dumb as all of us."
The fix isn't impossible, but it's difficult because of entrenched moneyed interests and people who support these because they blame the "other side" for all the problems. The conservatives blame the liberals, the "gay agenda", etc. for all the nation's problems, and the liberals blame the conservatives, the Koch Brothers, etc. for all the nation's problems. Neither of them blame the leaders on their own political side for the problems. The fix is to toss out all the leaders (on both sides), and rework the government to prevent the same things from happening again, such as by overturning Citizens United and writing new legislation to get money out of politics, to mandate a more fair voting system (proportional voting or Condorcet method or approval voting etc.), and likely a whole new Constitution. Good luck getting changes that large pushed through though. You can't even do the first two points because neither "side" is in favor of it (it would drastically reduce their power), and the last one is nearly impossible without a full revolution.
This is why countries never tend to get better, they always degenerate, until there's some giant war or bloody revolution to wipe the slate clean and start over. Think about it: when was the last time you heard of a country reforming itself voluntarily and getting much better, without a lot of violence? Look at the Roman Empire for instance: it decayed and then collapsed. It took Europe 1000 years to get back to that level of civilization and technology. Look at European countries now; sure, they're great places to live for the most part, but you can thank WWII for that.
This is exactly what I saw, and I'm just married without any kids. Huge monthly fees (not as high as yours though, remember I don't have kids), and ridiculously high deductibles. And I'm in a blue state. I went back to work in corporate America, but I'm a contractor so I don't get free healthcare.
It's not that research labs would hire coders to look for cures for cancer (they wouldn't), the problem is that people go into IT or programming professions, rather than getting degrees in biochemistry (or whatever is best for doing cancer research). And the reason people do this is obvious as you pointed out: the unemployment rate is very high, and that's for PhDs, who are precisely the people you want doing important research like that. It simply doesn't pay to spend years of your life in school getting multiple degrees, (and doing doctoral research that your professor takes all the credit for) and then find that you can't get any kind of job when you're done, and certainly not one that'll pay for all those hefty student loans you've racked up over the last 8 years. Meanwhile, all your friends who went into CS and got out after 4-5 years are getting paid 6 figures and have little trouble finding jobs.
the problem is the original article is talking about the supposedly best and the brightest of IT ... seen as leaders of their profession. When many of the leaders are simply out to make as much $$$$ as fast as they can many others adopt the same mentality. There is little movement of working to help for the greater good of society. It's how much can I get and how quickly can I get it?
This isn't just IT, this is everywhere in American society these days. Our own political leaders are no different; they're obviously corrupt to the core, and only in it for the money and power, and don't do anything to actually improve the state of our society, which is why our roads are falling apart and our bridges collapsing, while our taxes are sky-high (in the areas where good paying jobs exist). Basically, our society is just falling apart, because no one really cares any more, and why should they? Our leaders don't, and our citizens are too dumb to elect decent leaders or hold them accountable.
You can still get old leaded resistors, and they're no more expensive (frequently less expensive in fact) than SMD resistors.
Raw materials are only a small part of a product's cost.
I haven't read the article, but there's several reasons where doing things in NJ is ridiculously expensive:
1) property taxes are the highest in the nation. Alcatel-Lucent-Bell Labs is actually demolishing parts of its historic Murray Hill campus to reduce square footage, solely to reduce their property tax bill. Other companies have left the state, or threatened to leave and gotten special tax breaks, because of property taxes.
2) it's right next to NYC, and lots of New Yorkers have been moving over because Manhattan is so expensive these days and northern NJ is commutable by train and bus. This has driven up housing costs (which are then again compounded by higher property taxes).
3) corruption. This is probably one of the most corrupt places in the country, just behind Chicago.
Tesla already has at least one showroom in New Jersey to show their cars. There's one near me in the Short Hills Mall, and I'm pretty sure at least one other mall in northern NJ has a showroom too.