Many, many people in SF lack good economic prospects. There are a lot of highly educated engineers and physicians, sure, but these aren't the folks that are attacking self-driving cars.
We have a large population of dead-end folks living day-to-day in Single-Occupancy Residences (essentially run down hotels), shelters, housing projects, and on the streets. They are largely unskilled and many of them are not mentally balanced.
We also have economically disadvantaged neighborhoods with large numbers of people who don't (or can't) graduate high-school. Where is there a place for them in the new economy?
If you ever visit San Francisco, what will strike you is the extreme mismatch between the upper-middle class and the poor. We have a lot of both and not as many blue-color traditionally middle-class folks. The working class mostly commutes.
I live in San Francisco. Had my car broken into three times over the last seven years.
My favorite "experience", though, was this year. Someone stole our registration tags off our car while it was parked near my wife's work. We found out because we got a ticket for not having a registered vehicle.
So, we sent it an appeal that included the police report and a photocopy of our valid DMV registration. Open and shut, right?
Wrong. Our appeal was denied (!) and we were told we had to pay. We could go to their meeting in person to appeal again but I don't have the patience or time for that. It wasn't that expensive, so we paid the f-ing thing.
So my take-away is they should change the SF Tourist Slogan to something like: "San Francisco: The City Where you Get a Ticket for Being a Crime Victim".
I agree 100% with what you wrote. Your manager dropped the ball.
Also, I should say at my organization (and I wish this were more common) the managers don't necessarily make more money than the people they manage. We have some very high-performing individual contributors who make significantly more than I do (and they deserve it).
I know it's frustrating to be the strongest technically and not get promoted, but the strongest technical contributor isn't necessarily the best manager.
I lead a hardware development group and I don't do that much development myself anymore these days. What I spend my time on is:
1. Setting development priorities (we don't have enough resources, so I need to find the least-bad solution)
2. Hand-holding engineers having interpersonal problems
3. Shielding my team from organizational politics
4. Fighting my peer managers to get development resources for my team's projects
5. Promoting our group and our development ideas to upper management
6. Evaluating the contributions of the various technical folks on my team and trying to fairly distribute my (very) limited raise pool.
7. Doing hands-on hardware development.
As you can see, this isn't necessarily a good for the best technical engineer. Soft skills go a long, long way.
Like Cook, John Sculley was handed a pipeline of innovation. Sculley was a business manager, like Cook, and was successful in reducing some of Apples destructive excesses. However, besides his childlike fascination with the Newton, he didn't really have any kind of vision for the company and it was inevitable that Apple would hit a wall, because direct competition with Microsoft was suicide (as Apple would soon learn).
Sculley's greatest weakness, in my opinion, was that he didn't have the courage of his own convictions, and let a few inner-circle trusted managers whisper into his ear (*cough* Jean-Louis Gassee).
I have no idea if Cook is taking direction from anyone, but he seems focused on his strength, supply chain management. This will continue to increase or maintain Apple's profits while it coasts. It will work great, until it doesn't.
Apple may have yet another reckoning in the somewhat near future. The way they are focusing like a laser on iPhone and seemingly forgetting they have a really profitable Mac business will be their undoing in my opinion. Just look at how much the quality of Apple's system and some of its application software has declined over the last few years. It used to "just work" and now is finicky, bloated, and cumbersome. It is difficult to make the argument that MacOS is miles ahead of Windows, which you could do for years.
While the name "Atari" may be associated with arcade classics, the company Atari really has no connection whatsoever with that old organization besides the name.
After countless buyouts, takeovers, and bankruptcies I think it would be very difficult to trace any continuity back to the Golden Years.
My Dad is a retired Civil Engineer. He hasn't programmed in decades, he has some great stories about programming engineering hydrology simulations in Fortran in the early 60s.
My favorite story is he did the first simulation of Sao Paulo's waste-water treatment and runoff system. They called him in a panic 10 minutes after they ran it because it was "stuck"... he told them to wait for 30 minutes (since it took that long to churn through the initial matrix iteration). It worked and they were happy. He did it on an IBM 360.
My Dad ended up moving away from programming because the partner of the firm he was at told him to run away or else he would be branded "the computer guy". Even then tech types were second-class citizens.
Same here, I learned LOGO on a VIC-20 as my introduction to computers, then aced Pascal (ECS30) when I got to college.
It's a different time, that's for sure. Back when we were in college most students didn't know how to program when they started, that's why I was (and you were too) able to crush the first classes. Now the level of competition is much, much higher.
I've worked on medical devices (as a hardware engineer) and the QA on them is astounding. So bugs like that are exceedingly rare in the final product, even if they aren't any more rare than elsewhere in the first prototype.
I have to give technical explanations to business types regularly and in my experience a poor analogy that gives the wrong impression of a technical concept is worse than useless. I've found in my career is if you can express why it is valuable for someone to understand a technical term or concept, they are more than capable of understanding it. People usually don't understand all this technical jargon not because it's hard, but because they can't be bothered.
I would call these analogies flawed at best. For example, there is one that says Agile Development is like Punk Rock: instead of learning your instruments you learn three chords and get on with it. If someone explained Agile like that to me I would ban it from our office (while in reality it is an excellent methodology for some types of development).
Just FYI, both California and Texas were independent nations when they joined (they were not annexed) the United States. They independently revolted from Mexican rule. Texas was an independent nation for over a decade, California for only a month.
But how many people have cassette player? Unless you're marketing exclusively to hipsters or my parents, good luck finding people with cassette playback capability.
It originated with modern semiconductor industry in the 1950s. Semiconductors are the purest materials on the face of the earth and for some reason they preferred percentage purity over parts-per-million purity. The materials folks still say things like "seven-nines" but most device engineers I know talk in terms of impurity density per cubic centimeter (and will say it in terms of an exponential, for example, "this sample has 10 to the 13 per cubic centimeter phosphorous".
It doesn't actually rule out WIMPs, it just (for the most part) rules out WIMPs with specific characteristic. Much larger, more sensitive detectors (both Xenon and Argon) are on the drawing boards for future searches.
Just like supersymmetry, it is very hard to actually rule something out.
I'm raising my family in SF. It's great. Lots of culture, lots of playgrounds, vibrant public schools, lots of engaged parents. SF has amazing food, interesting places to go for day trips, tons of museums and libraries. It's a great place to raise kids.
This is very cool, but if the reason he did it was because "microprocessors were opaque" he should have just simulated it in Verilog or VHDL. Then he could follow all the operations he wanted at whatever detail he liked.
OK that makes sense. It does get hot out there... it's a completely different climate experience compared to douchbags like me who live on the Westside...
Jesus, where in LA do you live? Do you live in the IE or eastern SFV and are saying LA? When I lived in LA 10 years ago I only wished I had central air maybe 10 days out of the year.
Slashdot Mirror
Many, many people in SF lack good economic prospects. There are a lot of highly educated engineers and physicians, sure, but these aren't the folks that are attacking self-driving cars.
We have a large population of dead-end folks living day-to-day in Single-Occupancy Residences (essentially run down hotels), shelters, housing projects, and on the streets. They are largely unskilled and many of them are not mentally balanced.
We also have economically disadvantaged neighborhoods with large numbers of people who don't (or can't) graduate high-school. Where is there a place for them in the new economy?
If you ever visit San Francisco, what will strike you is the extreme mismatch between the upper-middle class and the poor. We have a lot of both and not as many blue-color traditionally middle-class folks. The working class mostly commutes.
I live in San Francisco. Had my car broken into three times over the last seven years.
My favorite "experience", though, was this year. Someone stole our registration tags off our car while it was parked near my wife's work. We found out because we got a ticket for not having a registered vehicle.
So, we sent it an appeal that included the police report and a photocopy of our valid DMV registration. Open and shut, right?
Wrong. Our appeal was denied (!) and we were told we had to pay. We could go to their meeting in person to appeal again but I don't have the patience or time for that. It wasn't that expensive, so we paid the f-ing thing.
So my take-away is they should change the SF Tourist Slogan to something like: "San Francisco: The City Where you Get a Ticket for Being a Crime Victim".
I agree 100% with what you wrote. Your manager dropped the ball.
Also, I should say at my organization (and I wish this were more common) the managers don't necessarily make more money than the people they manage. We have some very high-performing individual contributors who make significantly more than I do (and they deserve it).
I know it's frustrating to be the strongest technically and not get promoted, but the strongest technical contributor isn't necessarily the best manager.
I lead a hardware development group and I don't do that much development myself anymore these days. What I spend my time on is:
1. Setting development priorities (we don't have enough resources, so I need to find the least-bad solution)
2. Hand-holding engineers having interpersonal problems
3. Shielding my team from organizational politics
4. Fighting my peer managers to get development resources for my team's projects
5. Promoting our group and our development ideas to upper management
6. Evaluating the contributions of the various technical folks on my team and trying to fairly distribute my (very) limited raise pool.
7. Doing hands-on hardware development.
As you can see, this isn't necessarily a good for the best technical engineer. Soft skills go a long, long way.
... until he didn't.
Like Cook, John Sculley was handed a pipeline of innovation. Sculley was a business manager, like Cook, and was successful in reducing some of Apples destructive excesses. However, besides his childlike fascination with the Newton, he didn't really have any kind of vision for the company and it was inevitable that Apple would hit a wall, because direct competition with Microsoft was suicide (as Apple would soon learn).
Sculley's greatest weakness, in my opinion, was that he didn't have the courage of his own convictions, and let a few inner-circle trusted managers whisper into his ear (*cough* Jean-Louis Gassee).
I have no idea if Cook is taking direction from anyone, but he seems focused on his strength, supply chain management. This will continue to increase or maintain Apple's profits while it coasts. It will work great, until it doesn't.
Apple may have yet another reckoning in the somewhat near future. The way they are focusing like a laser on iPhone and seemingly forgetting they have a really profitable Mac business will be their undoing in my opinion. Just look at how much the quality of Apple's system and some of its application software has declined over the last few years. It used to "just work" and now is finicky, bloated, and cumbersome. It is difficult to make the argument that MacOS is miles ahead of Windows, which you could do for years.
We shall see.
While the name "Atari" may be associated with arcade classics, the company Atari really has no connection whatsoever with that old organization besides the name.
After countless buyouts, takeovers, and bankruptcies I think it would be very difficult to trace any continuity back to the Golden Years.
My Dad is a retired Civil Engineer. He hasn't programmed in decades, he has some great stories about programming engineering hydrology simulations in Fortran in the early 60s.
My favorite story is he did the first simulation of Sao Paulo's waste-water treatment and runoff system. They called him in a panic 10 minutes after they ran it because it was "stuck"... he told them to wait for 30 minutes (since it took that long to churn through the initial matrix iteration). It worked and they were happy. He did it on an IBM 360.
My Dad ended up moving away from programming because the partner of the firm he was at told him to run away or else he would be branded "the computer guy". Even then tech types were second-class citizens.
Do you know anything about John Draper? He is practically a nerd archetype.
Same here, I learned LOGO on a VIC-20 as my introduction to computers, then aced Pascal (ECS30) when I got to college.
It's a different time, that's for sure. Back when we were in college most students didn't know how to program when they started, that's why I was (and you were too) able to crush the first classes. Now the level of competition is much, much higher.
So LinkedIn is working on medical devices now?
I've worked on medical devices (as a hardware engineer) and the QA on them is astounding. So bugs like that are exceedingly rare in the final product, even if they aren't any more rare than elsewhere in the first prototype.
The first part of the book is great. The last part sucked. (in my very humble opinion). My favorite books of his are The Diamond Age and Reamde.
woosh!
So this guy collapsed from working in the heat in the California Central Valley. In February.
Was he inside the cab of a truck with the heat on too high? It's lucky to get into the mid-50s in the Central Valley in the winter.
Marky Mark reference?
I have to give technical explanations to business types regularly and in my experience a poor analogy that gives the wrong impression of a technical concept is worse than useless. I've found in my career is if you can express why it is valuable for someone to understand a technical term or concept, they are more than capable of understanding it. People usually don't understand all this technical jargon not because it's hard, but because they can't be bothered.
I would call these analogies flawed at best. For example, there is one that says Agile Development is like Punk Rock: instead of learning your instruments you learn three chords and get on with it. If someone explained Agile like that to me I would ban it from our office (while in reality it is an excellent methodology for some types of development).
Just FYI, both California and Texas were independent nations when they joined (they were not annexed) the United States. They independently revolted from Mexican rule. Texas was an independent nation for over a decade, California for only a month.
In other shocking news, it was reported that the top 1% own more Ferraris than the entire bottom 99% combined! How unfair!
But how many people have cassette player? Unless you're marketing exclusively to hipsters or my parents, good luck finding people with cassette playback capability.
It originated with modern semiconductor industry in the 1950s. Semiconductors are the purest materials on the face of the earth and for some reason they preferred percentage purity over parts-per-million purity. The materials folks still say things like "seven-nines" but most device engineers I know talk in terms of impurity density per cubic centimeter (and will say it in terms of an exponential, for example, "this sample has 10 to the 13 per cubic centimeter phosphorous".
It doesn't actually rule out WIMPs, it just (for the most part) rules out WIMPs with specific characteristic. Much larger, more sensitive detectors (both Xenon and Argon) are on the drawing boards for future searches.
Just like supersymmetry, it is very hard to actually rule something out.
I'm raising my family in SF. It's great. Lots of culture, lots of playgrounds, vibrant public schools, lots of engaged parents. SF has amazing food, interesting places to go for day trips, tons of museums and libraries. It's a great place to raise kids.
This is very cool, but if the reason he did it was because "microprocessors were opaque" he should have just simulated it in Verilog or VHDL. Then he could follow all the operations he wanted at whatever detail he liked.
OK that makes sense. It does get hot out there... it's a completely different climate experience compared to douchbags like me who live on the Westside...
Jesus, where in LA do you live? Do you live in the IE or eastern SFV and are saying LA? When I lived in LA 10 years ago I only wished I had central air maybe 10 days out of the year.
My iPhone is nowhere near as accurate as my Fitbit when it comes to tracking my steps. Not even close.