I think it would be tough to argue that being friends with a powerful person is a good proxy for management skills, but I would be surprised if such people turned out not to have good social skills. The cronyism problem in the upper layers is just that, and that's why my kid will be going to the most elitist college I can get him into. Excepting a very lucky very few, that is the only way into the upper echelons from the lower.
As for the actors/artists, I suspect there is a genetic component, and of course social and environmental components as well. Lots of people in lots of fields followed their parents paths simply because that was what they saw how to do growing up, plus they had the contacts to make inroads. It's true in software engineering too... there are a LOT of second generation software engineers in the industry these days, and I expect the third generation software engineers resumes in the next decade.
Buddy is probably sufficient for this argument. Was there anyone at those job sites you would (and/or did) choose to have lunch and socialize with, even though the job did not require it?
Friends of convenience are still friends. Not every 'friend' has to be some kind of life-long partner.
I'll just give you this, as a gift. Go read more. Read the research on IQ for yourself. Understand what the scientists have found as evidence for causes of differences.
Seriously, educate yourself so you don't have to live in ignorance all your life, the way out of misery is open to you.
Or, go on as you are, believe that the earth is flat, that evolution is a lie, etc. Your choice, but it's really your misery.
I have never seen a company where HR is the first level screen. Not even at a very large company. They MAY be the second level screen, e.g., they may have a kill option for someone who they think cannot legally work at the company. But beyond that, their involvement is usually pretty limited until the hiring division is ready to proceed to making an offer.
Their website has reasonably detailed listings. I'm qualified to be their performance engineer, but I'm not applying because the pay and options aren't remotely competitive with what I have now.
Our place is similar (or who knows, maybe we work for the same place, you never know). We have a few positions that require specific technologies (e.g., Oracle sql expert), but most of our positions just require kick-ass coder willing to learn our technology stack, and with social skills sufficient to fit in.
The real challenge is what you do when the company has gotten large enough and is involved in things that are beyond the capacity of any single human being to fully understand. Most such companies go down the path of developing processes, but the world is waiting to throw huge wads of cash at a better solution.
We try to hire for someone who knows sql databases on a pretty regular basis. We need someone who knows sql databases. Preferably comfortable working with as many as possible.
This seems like an inexpensive problem to solve. You buy a pay as you go cell phone, and answer 'Beowulf Inc, how may I direct your call?', in your best secretary voice. Then whoever they ask for, you answer in a different voice, and answer their questions about your employment. You can set up a website to back this for a combined cost of maybe $50 / year.
Soft skills like the ability to make friends, work together without coming to blows, etc, are frequently valued more highly by employers than pure technical skills. Right or wrong (and I happen to think right), that makes being "linked in" an early proxy for those skills, and is in no way 'unfair' to those who can't make friends. If you can't work easily and comfortably and sociably with significant numbers of people, we really can't use you in our large organization.
Like in anything, there is a range of competencies. A good recruiting company would have viewed your friends' self-run business as a huge positive, an opportunity to advertise him as having that capability to run his own business, drive to succeed, etc.
When the pixels are too small to be identified by the human visual system, you no longer need anti-aliasing to approximate a better line, and you can save that performance waste. What you're missing is that while the high resolution is still a discrete raster, it stops mattering whether you apply the aliasing formula to it when it passes the capacity of the eye to resolve the details. Yes, if you put the display under a microscope, you might still see an improvement from anti-aliasing, but otherwise, you shouldn't care.
Nah, cure in the baking sense, because if you don't, you really don't want to cannibalize one. Too many diseases, plus you really need to get all that hair off to make them at all appetizing.
I'm 100% sure they'll learn the lesson: you can successfully stop widespread distribution of hacks that jailbreak your system, and laugh all the way to the bank when no one cares and buys your system at christmas anyway.
There's really a range in there, it's not all black and white the same. There's plenty of factual evidence that your choice to drink poses a significant statistical risk of killing me.
For marijuana, there's a similar, but much smaller risk.
For porn, not so much.
Where our society chooses to draw the line in terms of protecting one person from statistical risks taken by another person is.. well... a choice to be made by our society. After experimenting with prohibition, we decided that the risks to all of us from that strict law were greater than the benefits, and we pulled back.
People who decide to make decisions for other people aren't inherently evil or stupid, that's just the reality of society... every law is a decision of some kind you've decided to make for someone else, and NOT every law is wrong, just the ones that demonstrably involve themselves in other people's business FOR NO BENEFIT.
There are lots of SSDs that are maxing out sata II/3gbps. That's 375 MB/sec of maximum physical bandwidth, so all the SSDs in the 350+MB/sec class are being limited by the connector.
Maybe you should ask your question in a story about IQ scores. Or you could get yourself a basic education so you'd know that the IQ tests have been shown to be quite severely culturally biased. Saying one group has a lower score than another group is roughly equivalent to suggesting they are different groups. Entirely circular reasoning, whee!
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I think it would be tough to argue that being friends with a powerful person is a good proxy for management skills, but I would be surprised if such people turned out not to have good social skills. The cronyism problem in the upper layers is just that, and that's why my kid will be going to the most elitist college I can get him into. Excepting a very lucky very few, that is the only way into the upper echelons from the lower.
As for the actors/artists, I suspect there is a genetic component, and of course social and environmental components as well. Lots of people in lots of fields followed their parents paths simply because that was what they saw how to do growing up, plus they had the contacts to make inroads. It's true in software engineering too ... there are a LOT of second generation software engineers in the industry these days, and I expect the third generation software engineers resumes in the next decade.
Buddy is probably sufficient for this argument. Was there anyone at those job sites you would (and/or did) choose to have lunch and socialize with, even though the job did not require it?
Friends of convenience are still friends. Not every 'friend' has to be some kind of life-long partner.
I'd hate to work where you've worked. If none of your coworkers are friends ... shudder.
25 connections at linked-in is plenty. I wouldn't worry about your soft skills. Zero to five connections at linked in would worry me.
I'll just give you this, as a gift.
Go read more. Read the research on IQ for yourself. Understand what the scientists have found as evidence for causes of differences.
Seriously, educate yourself so you don't have to live in ignorance all your life, the way out of misery is open to you.
Or, go on as you are, believe that the earth is flat, that evolution is a lie, etc. Your choice, but it's really your misery.
+1.
I have never seen a company where HR is the first level screen. Not even at a very large company. They MAY be the second level screen, e.g., they may have a kill option for someone who they think cannot legally work at the company. But beyond that, their involvement is usually pretty limited until the hiring division is ready to proceed to making an offer.
Their website has reasonably detailed listings. I'm qualified to be their performance engineer, but I'm not applying because the pay and options aren't remotely competitive with what I have now.
Our place is similar (or who knows, maybe we work for the same place, you never know). We have a few positions that require specific technologies (e.g., Oracle sql expert), but most of our positions just require kick-ass coder willing to learn our technology stack, and with social skills sufficient to fit in.
The real challenge is what you do when the company has gotten large enough and is involved in things that are beyond the capacity of any single human being to fully understand. Most such companies go down the path of developing processes, but the world is waiting to throw huge wads of cash at a better solution.
We try to hire for someone who knows sql databases on a pretty regular basis. We need someone who knows sql databases. Preferably comfortable working with as many as possible.
This seems like an inexpensive problem to solve. You buy a pay as you go cell phone, and answer 'Beowulf Inc, how may I direct your call?', in your best secretary voice. Then whoever they ask for, you answer in a different voice, and answer their questions about your employment. You can set up a website to back this for a combined cost of maybe $50 / year.
Soft skills like the ability to make friends, work together without coming to blows, etc, are frequently valued more highly by employers than pure technical skills. Right or wrong (and I happen to think right), that makes being "linked in" an early proxy for those skills, and is in no way 'unfair' to those who can't make friends. If you can't work easily and comfortably and sociably with significant numbers of people, we really can't use you in our large organization.
Like in anything, there is a range of competencies. A good recruiting company would have viewed your friends' self-run business as a huge positive, an opportunity to advertise him as having that capability to run his own business, drive to succeed, etc.
If you think there is only one 'American culture' you need to travel outside of your suburb.
When the pixels are too small to be identified by the human visual system, you no longer need anti-aliasing to approximate a better line, and you can save that performance waste. What you're missing is that while the high resolution is still a discrete raster, it stops mattering whether you apply the aliasing formula to it when it passes the capacity of the eye to resolve the details. Yes, if you put the display under a microscope, you might still see an improvement from anti-aliasing, but otherwise, you shouldn't care.
You get the facts close to right, but reach exactly the wrong conclusion.
The whole point of a higher resolution display would be to do away with the need for anti-aliasing by NOT NEEDING to accommodate the discrete raster.
Uggggghhhhhh! Who is writing this crap?
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22eight+times+smaller%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
About 100K writers.
I think the whole point is that it did catch on, like a lot of other sucky engineering workarounds. And now we might have a chance to kill it at last.
Universal health care, cure French girls,
Why? Are they sick?
Nah, cure in the baking sense, because if you don't, you really don't want to cannibalize one. Too many diseases, plus you really need to get all that hair off to make them at all appetizing.
I'm 100% sure they'll learn the lesson: you can successfully stop widespread distribution of hacks that jailbreak your system, and laugh all the way to the bank when no one cares and buys your system at christmas anyway.
There's really a range in there, it's not all black and white the same. There's plenty of factual evidence that your choice to drink poses a significant statistical risk of killing me.
For marijuana, there's a similar, but much smaller risk.
For porn, not so much.
Where our society chooses to draw the line in terms of protecting one person from statistical risks taken by another person is .. well ... a choice to be made by our society. After experimenting with prohibition, we decided that the risks to all of us from that strict law were greater than the benefits, and we pulled back.
People who decide to make decisions for other people aren't inherently evil or stupid, that's just the reality of society ... every law is a decision of some kind you've decided to make for someone else, and NOT every law is wrong, just the ones that demonstrably involve themselves in other people's business FOR NO BENEFIT.
There are lots of SSDs that are maxing out sata II/3gbps. That's 375 MB/sec of maximum physical bandwidth, so all the SSDs in the 350+MB/sec class are being limited by the connector.
Maybe you should ask your question in a story about IQ scores.
Or you could get yourself a basic education so you'd know that the IQ tests have been shown to be quite severely culturally biased. Saying one group has a lower score than another group is roughly equivalent to suggesting they are different groups. Entirely circular reasoning, whee!
Bad news for you: the slashdot forum is not a visible form of protest. No one cares what anyone writes here.
I'm from the CA Bay area, where the police are known to shoot unarmed men lying on the ground.