I have to admit I didn't think this was the case, but now that I think of it, our last 5 hires of anyone under 30 for software engineering/test have all been H1B from India.
Stop dropping the context of the conversation (experienced engineer hurt by H1B and age discrimination).Pretty ignorant move by you to dive straight into a personal attack.
Just because no one wants to hire you doesn't mean people aren't getting hired left and right.
Way to miss the entire conversation/sarc. First off I didn't say nobody wants to hire me - I'm employed (if you bothered to actually read my post you'd know that). I have managed to stay that way mainly by shading into management/team-lead, but I can see that the road does end as a tech persion pretty firmly by 50, starting in the 40's. Secondly, the problem (which was stated up thread, had you bothered to read) is not that companies are not hiring, it is that companies will not in general hire an over 50 software or "tech" engineer (as anything other than management). There is indeed a cliff looming for al of us at 50 in most tech fields.
That is why I am advising against software or tech as a career, or else have a plan to exit it to something else by your mid 40's, certainly no later than 50. The guys that havent had a chance to do this (especially those in their 50's now) are screwed - try telling guys like them are that they are getting hired "left and right" - it is not happening. The point of this entire thread that you apparently missed or didn't bother to read was that H1B, and younger less experienced, less well paid, more naive and willing to work stupid hours were getting hired instead of experienced engineers. Don't get stuck on stupid, jumping to unwarranted conclusions about me, and stop being so short sighted about the problem in general.
True. If I had my wish, I could stay cranking out code and doing software design and problem solving. As it is, I am pretty much being pushed into management, and have discovered that I can do it well, but I do not like the work. It sucks getting up going to a job that you dread doing. I am glad that I only have so sustain this for another year or so. I will miss tech (telecom R&D)
yeah I know, not supposed to reply to myself but, I know someone will ask "Why dont you take your own advise?"
I am taking my own advice - chopped my standard of living in half (smaller house, not buying a new car, making do with older furniture, eating out a lot less, etc), putting half of my take-home away, and once I get 2 years of living expenses plus tuition/books/fees saved, I'm headed back to university for my RN. I'm also clearing out the pre-requisites and knocking off the rust, having taken classes at night, like Microbiology, and Anatomy & Physiology (pre-nursing stuff, biology that I never went near in engineering), plus doing some volunteer work at a hospital as a Nursing Aide 1-2 Saturdays a month to make sure this is something I want to do (surprisingly, it is). I'm about a year away from "Go", and am putting in applications this fall to start next fall. This sure wasn't where I thought I would be headed at this point in life, but its a lot more comfortable than flying off the devastating employment cliff that comes at 50 in a tech career.
Why the hell go into tech then? Why not choose a field that rewards experience instead? Who the hell wants a field that peaks at 35, and then be treated as leftovers after that?
Exactly! This is exactly what I tell younger engineers when they ask me what I would do differently in my career.
For instance, Medical technology and medical care are under-served, with RN's who have been (software or hardware) engineering leads being very valuable. And if not, RNs will pretty much be in demand for the foreseeable future anyway, and they do not get discarded with age unless they can no longer perform their duties. They pay isn't 150K, but it is steady and substantial (add up 20 years of steady work at 80K from 45-65 versus intermittent work and massive stress in tech during those same years), and with a masters, you can even go into practice and get those 6 figures of income. Also, the work can have a moral quality to it that is missing in most software or high-tech. Knowing that you can and are making a difference in another life gains allure over coding a tiny part of "the next big thing" (which will be forgotten in 5 years anyway), It makes this particular later-in-life career changeover viable to me, since I will be able to continue to work as an RN well past an age when I would have been forced out completely of tech.
One of the problems is that there is no scientific consensus on how to reconstruct global temperature variations during the Holocene - so we may surmise we are probably warming, but we have no firm idea how much nor without it can there be certainty as to how much of the change is human induced or exacerbated without such a consensus. It seems to be based on whatever system one chooses, somewhat arbitrarily at this point, to use for historical reconstruction. There are no models which account for the historical record and can reproduce it from the prior data. Its rather frightening to think that something epochal (and maybe apocalyptic) may be rolling toward us, and we are blind to it - but it is nearly as worrisome that some people are attempting to force collectivism so they can order humanity what to do on this same "best guess" basis. One thing is for sure: It is very human of us to turn it into a political football.
What part of the U of MD study that derived the 97% do you find scientific? The fact that they did not define their sample before asking the questions? the fact they got 70% non-responses? The fact that they had to redefine their sample down until they were left with only 79 data points out of the 10k? The fact that the questions were phrased in such a way that the answers did not support the conclusions? The fact that there was no statistical confidence associated with the study, results or sample? I suggest your reliance on "consensus" and an utter crap survey is misguided at best, and disingenuous propaganda at worst.
2) One of the fascinating things about GRACE, that has proven more exciting than would have thought possible, is that the Earth's gravity is a function of time. GRACE is able to detect when large areas of earth are saturated with water, or changes in ocean currents, from the change in gravity. The Moon probably doesn't change at all. If they do detect changes, though...that would be exciting!
I wonder what will happen if they find a strong magnetic anomaly near Tycho crater?
Trade chat in World of Warcraft during the Superbowl or World Series or World Cup. Heh. (Of course, IRL I doubt I would have *any* of most of the people that troll trade chat in WoW over to my house, at least not without a plan to dispose of their corpses).
Most managers are idiots. Sorry but thats the reality.
Not necessarily, but I do agree that few of them are as good at what they do as the people they manage, at least in the tech world - only companies I've found who break that rule tend to be exceptionally good places to work (and rare). The "old" HP for example.
Of course I exaggerated the management aspects of my times as a lead, so that helped open the doors
So you lied.
Saavik: You lied.
Spock: I exaggerated.
-- "The Wrath of Khan," stardate 8130.3
What's next, murder?
Overstating the depth of my management experience (as a tech lead and systems architect on large projects) is akin to murder? Tell me, what color is the sky on your world?
Oh I forgot, many people lie to each other as a matter of getting through the day. And no one sees a problem with this?
Welcome to the Human Race, Mr. Spock.
I'm happy for you - but management? Couldn't you find something honest to do?
Unlike, say, a deathcamp guard, management can be an honest occupation if you choose to make it so. I take it as a primary function to get the best out of my staff and try to be sure they have fun and rewarding times doing so. That means keep all the company BS off of the people I manage, and to stay the hell out of their way for the most part, listen to the complaints (and act on them when possible and reasonable), and fight for them when it comes to things like working reasonable hours and flexible schedules, realistic timelines (still havent forced any upper management to choke that down yet) and sane work estimates. As a manager, I regularly take ass chewings, seldom give them. Praise in public, correction in private is the way to go. And please do recall - I manage as a STOPGAP when the coding well is dry, as it tends to be when you are an "older" coder. I much prefer engineering a system and beating on a keyboard (preferentially on a Linux box, with little more than ratpad UI, bash, vi and gcc) to sitting in endless conference calls, meetings and death by powerpoint. I am convinced that PowerPoint causes rational and cognitive degeneration, based on observation of management meetings. But managing does pay the bills and sliding into management has gotten me past layoffs, when its become necessary to go over to that side of the house. I don't enjoy it all that much, but management experience is good to have and understand when your primary job is a tech lead, lead coder, or systems architect/engineer; it lets you know what kinds of games are being played behind the scenes and you can sometimes look like a clairvoyant or (to continue with the Star Trek riffs), Mr Scott. RIght now, I am working as a "software systems engineer", which gives me some management duties (mainly budgetary for hardware for our lab, and the sys admins), but I still get to code even if it is mainly hacking together scripts and little C progs the programming staff is too busy to deal with (I'm threatening to use Scheme just to be abstruse). And that makes me happy enough, and pays the mortgage and the retirement fund. For us lower digit user number types, staying "in the tech" is becoming increasingly rare and difficult.
Come on over to the dark side (management)... I've done that as a stopgap between coding projects, when necessary. Of course I exaggerated the management aspects of my times as a lead, so that helped open the doors, and one of my employers actually paid my tuition and books to go back to school at night and get an MBA. But I'd still rather be learning, designing answers to problems, and then coding them.
It has more bandwidth running through it than Hawaii. Is that for the world's largest K-Mart?
One explanation is the US Dept of Defense. Guam is a large military logistics center
Another point is that Guam is legally US territory, so US law applies there, whcih can be handy for certain commecial ventures, as well as for military/defense/intelligence data transit
Plus Guam looks to be a handy location in terms of landing a cable there as a reshape/regent/retransmission (3R) redistribution point prior to going back into the water (look at the geography)
... then they are dead. Government and other types will come down on them like a ton of bricks. Recall that only a week ago they used a SWAT team on defaulted student loan - what do you think they will do with these losers if they do disrupt important government and economic activity? They will possibly be shot dead if they do this. But that's nto the worst part: they will be giving the government all the excuses they need to take tight control of the internet, destroying net anonymity and controlling access. Damned fools. If anyone knows anyone that is in Anonymous or Lulzsec and who is planning to take part in activities, do us all a favor - beat them in the head with a shovel until they change their mind.
I got looped in on an email thread where the other three people were high school kids using Facebook, so my only method for actually communicating was that I had to add as a friend a high school girl. I'm a 30 year old man. My wife was less than thrilled.
Same reason TechTV died - when the cable operators bought it out, they moved it to LA, it became G4, they killed much of its original programming, and they picked up crap reality shows like Cops, Campus PD, Cheaters, a pile of Japanese humiliation game shows, and endless reruns of Ninja Warrior.
This isn't to say Anon's members are blameless, and legally off the hook. A case can be made they were unknowingly but maliciously contributing factors. Its the malice part that will push law enforcement and prosecutor's buttons - they knew what they were doing was wrong/criminal and did so anyway. Without malice, its simple negligence; with malice, you may have a contributory criminal violation. The law is kinda funny like that - along for a minor prank, someone does a felony act (prior unknown to you) and all of a sudden you are looking at accomplice charges. So watch out for law enforcement to answer Sony's call.
I eat 6 much smaller, low carb, high protein/fat meals during my awake hours, no further apart than 3 hours. This keeps my blood sugar and insulin levels fairly steady, and has helped me lose weight and get completely off the Type 2 Diabetes medications (along with daily aerobic walking and moderate weight lifting). I plan to eat this way the rest of my life, since it has my blood chemistry, cholesterol, triglycerides, A1C/Glucose, blood pressure, weight and so on in a far more healthy range. How does Joel fit that in with his "loner" theory? If I eat breakfast after my morning walk at 7:30, then "second breakfast" at 10:30, lunch at 13:30, supper at 16:30 (typically my lightest meal of the day), dinner at 19:30, and a small snack at 22:30, I guess I just don' fit into his world.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to admit I didn't think this was the case, but now that I think of it, our last 5 hires of anyone under 30 for software engineering/test have all been H1B from India.
Stop dropping the context of the conversation (experienced engineer hurt by H1B and age discrimination).Pretty ignorant move by you to dive straight into a personal attack.
Just because no one wants to hire you doesn't mean people aren't getting hired left and right.
Way to miss the entire conversation /sarc. First off I didn't say nobody wants to hire me - I'm employed (if you bothered to actually read my post you'd know that). I have managed to stay that way mainly by shading into management/team-lead, but I can see that the road does end as a tech persion pretty firmly by 50, starting in the 40's. Secondly, the problem (which was stated up thread, had you bothered to read) is not that companies are not hiring, it is that companies will not in general hire an over 50 software or "tech" engineer (as anything other than management). There is indeed a cliff looming for al of us at 50 in most tech fields.
That is why I am advising against software or tech as a career, or else have a plan to exit it to something else by your mid 40's, certainly no later than 50. The guys that havent had a chance to do this (especially those in their 50's now) are screwed - try telling guys like them are that they are getting hired "left and right" - it is not happening. The point of this entire thread that you apparently missed or didn't bother to read was that H1B, and younger less experienced, less well paid, more naive and willing to work stupid hours were getting hired instead of experienced engineers. Don't get stuck on stupid, jumping to unwarranted conclusions about me, and stop being so short sighted about the problem in general.
May as well practice this...
And Get Off of My Lawn
Registered Nurse - state licensed and nationally certified.
It's sad how fucked-up our country has become.
True. If I had my wish, I could stay cranking out code and doing software design and problem solving. As it is, I am pretty much being pushed into management, and have discovered that I can do it well, but I do not like the work. It sucks getting up going to a job that you dread doing. I am glad that I only have so sustain this for another year or so. I will miss tech (telecom R&D)
yeah I know, not supposed to reply to myself but, I know someone will ask "Why dont you take your own advise?"
I am taking my own advice - chopped my standard of living in half (smaller house, not buying a new car, making do with older furniture, eating out a lot less, etc), putting half of my take-home away, and once I get 2 years of living expenses plus tuition/books/fees saved, I'm headed back to university for my RN. I'm also clearing out the pre-requisites and knocking off the rust, having taken classes at night, like Microbiology, and Anatomy & Physiology (pre-nursing stuff, biology that I never went near in engineering), plus doing some volunteer work at a hospital as a Nursing Aide 1-2 Saturdays a month to make sure this is something I want to do (surprisingly, it is). I'm about a year away from "Go", and am putting in applications this fall to start next fall. This sure wasn't where I thought I would be headed at this point in life, but its a lot more comfortable than flying off the devastating employment cliff that comes at 50 in a tech career.
Why the hell go into tech then? Why not choose a field that rewards experience instead? Who the hell wants a field that peaks at 35, and then be treated as leftovers after that?
Exactly! This is exactly what I tell younger engineers when they ask me what I would do differently in my career.
For instance, Medical technology and medical care are under-served, with RN's who have been (software or hardware) engineering leads being very valuable. And if not, RNs will pretty much be in demand for the foreseeable future anyway, and they do not get discarded with age unless they can no longer perform their duties. They pay isn't 150K, but it is steady and substantial (add up 20 years of steady work at 80K from 45-65 versus intermittent work and massive stress in tech during those same years), and with a masters, you can even go into practice and get those 6 figures of income. Also, the work can have a moral quality to it that is missing in most software or high-tech. Knowing that you can and are making a difference in another life gains allure over coding a tiny part of "the next big thing" (which will be forgotten in 5 years anyway), It makes this particular later-in-life career changeover viable to me, since I will be able to continue to work as an RN well past an age when I would have been forced out completely of tech.
One of the problems is that there is no scientific consensus on how to reconstruct global temperature variations during the Holocene - so we may surmise we are probably warming, but we have no firm idea how much nor without it can there be certainty as to how much of the change is human induced or exacerbated without such a consensus. It seems to be based on whatever system one chooses, somewhat arbitrarily at this point, to use for historical reconstruction. There are no models which account for the historical record and can reproduce it from the prior data. Its rather frightening to think that something epochal (and maybe apocalyptic) may be rolling toward us, and we are blind to it - but it is nearly as worrisome that some people are attempting to force collectivism so they can order humanity what to do on this same "best guess" basis. One thing is for sure: It is very human of us to turn it into a political football.
Just a bit of advice: reposting the same links to an advocacy site is not really all that effective nor convincing - for either side.
What part of the U of MD study that derived the 97% do you find scientific? The fact that they did not define their sample before asking the questions? the fact they got 70% non-responses? The fact that they had to redefine their sample down until they were left with only 79 data points out of the 10k? The fact that the questions were phrased in such a way that the answers did not support the conclusions? The fact that there was no statistical confidence associated with the study, results or sample? I suggest your reliance on "consensus" and an utter crap survey is misguided at best, and disingenuous propaganda at worst.
2) One of the fascinating things about GRACE, that has proven more exciting than would have thought possible, is that the Earth's gravity is a function of time. GRACE is able to detect when large areas of earth are saturated with water, or changes in ocean currents, from the change in gravity. The Moon probably doesn't change at all. If they do detect changes, though...that would be exciting!
I wonder what will happen if they find a strong magnetic anomaly near Tycho crater?
Trade chat in World of Warcraft during the Superbowl or World Series or World Cup. Heh. (Of course, IRL I doubt I would have *any* of most of the people that troll trade chat in WoW over to my house, at least not without a plan to dispose of their corpses).
Most managers are idiots. Sorry but thats the reality.
Not necessarily, but I do agree that few of them are as good at what they do as the people they manage, at least in the tech world - only companies I've found who break that rule tend to be exceptionally good places to work (and rare). The "old" HP for example.
Of course I exaggerated the management aspects of my times as a lead, so that helped open the doors
So you lied.
Saavik: You lied.
Spock: I exaggerated.
-- "The Wrath of Khan," stardate 8130.3
What's next, murder?
Overstating the depth of my management experience (as a tech lead and systems architect on large projects) is akin to murder? Tell me, what color is the sky on your world?
Oh I forgot, many people lie to each other as a matter of getting through the day. And no one sees a problem with this?
Welcome to the Human Race, Mr. Spock.
I'm happy for you - but management? Couldn't you find something honest to do?
Unlike, say, a deathcamp guard, management can be an honest occupation if you choose to make it so. I take it as a primary function to get the best out of my staff and try to be sure they have fun and rewarding times doing so. That means keep all the company BS off of the people I manage, and to stay the hell out of their way for the most part, listen to the complaints (and act on them when possible and reasonable), and fight for them when it comes to things like working reasonable hours and flexible schedules, realistic timelines (still havent forced any upper management to choke that down yet) and sane work estimates. As a manager, I regularly take ass chewings, seldom give them. Praise in public, correction in private is the way to go. And please do recall - I manage as a STOPGAP when the coding well is dry, as it tends to be when you are an "older" coder. I much prefer engineering a system and beating on a keyboard (preferentially on a Linux box, with little more than ratpad UI, bash, vi and gcc) to sitting in endless conference calls, meetings and death by powerpoint. I am convinced that PowerPoint causes rational and cognitive degeneration, based on observation of management meetings. But managing does pay the bills and sliding into management has gotten me past layoffs, when its become necessary to go over to that side of the house. I don't enjoy it all that much, but management experience is good to have and understand when your primary job is a tech lead, lead coder, or systems architect/engineer; it lets you know what kinds of games are being played behind the scenes and you can sometimes look like a clairvoyant or (to continue with the Star Trek riffs), Mr Scott. RIght now, I am working as a "software systems engineer", which gives me some management duties (mainly budgetary for hardware for our lab, and the sys admins), but I still get to code even if it is mainly hacking together scripts and little C progs the programming staff is too busy to deal with (I'm threatening to use Scheme just to be abstruse). And that makes me happy enough, and pays the mortgage and the retirement fund. For us lower digit user number types, staying "in the tech" is becoming increasingly rare and difficult.
Come on over to the dark side (management)... I've done that as a stopgap between coding projects, when necessary. Of course I exaggerated the management aspects of my times as a lead, so that helped open the doors, and one of my employers actually paid my tuition and books to go back to school at night and get an MBA. But I'd still rather be learning, designing answers to problems, and then coding them.
Wait... it's 2011. Damn it's been a *long* day. Seemed like a year.
No, the calendar peopel simply made an Off-by-One error somewhere, screwing up the zero-based system
It has more bandwidth running through it than Hawaii. Is that for the world's largest K-Mart?
One explanation is the US Dept of Defense. Guam is a large military logistics center
Another point is that Guam is legally US territory, so US law applies there, whcih can be handy for certain commecial ventures, as well as for military/defense/intelligence data transit
Plus Guam looks to be a handy location in terms of landing a cable there as a reshape/regent/retransmission (3R) redistribution point prior to going back into the water (look at the geography)
... then they are dead. Government and other types will come down on them like a ton of bricks. Recall that only a week ago they used a SWAT team on defaulted student loan - what do you think they will do with these losers if they do disrupt important government and economic activity? They will possibly be shot dead if they do this. But that's nto the worst part: they will be giving the government all the excuses they need to take tight control of the internet, destroying net anonymity and controlling access. Damned fools. If anyone knows anyone that is in Anonymous or Lulzsec and who is planning to take part in activities, do us all a favor - beat them in the head with a shovel until they change their mind.
So screwing over WOW players trying to get customer support is now "justice"? What a bunch of wankers.
I got looped in on an email thread where the other three people were high school kids using Facebook, so my only method for actually communicating was that I had to add as a friend a high school girl. I'm a 30 year old man. My wife was less than thrilled.
Congressman Weiner, is that you?
I hope they are now willing to admit their errors and apologise for their abuse of the moderation system.
Come on, low 4 digit ID, did you forget we are on slashdot?
Same reason TechTV died - when the cable operators bought it out, they moved it to LA, it became G4, they killed much of its original programming, and they picked up crap reality shows like Cops, Campus PD, Cheaters, a pile of Japanese humiliation game shows, and endless reruns of Ninja Warrior.
augh hit submit instead of continue editing ...
This isn't to say Anon's members are blameless, and legally off the hook. A case can be made they were unknowingly but maliciously contributing factors. Its the malice part that will push law enforcement and prosecutor's buttons - they knew what they were doing was wrong/criminal and did so anyway. Without malice, its simple negligence; with malice, you may have a contributory criminal violation. The law is kinda funny like that - along for a minor prank, someone does a felony act (prior unknown to you) and all of a sudden you are looking at accomplice charges. So watch out for law enforcement to answer Sony's call.
Logical Fallacy on Sony's part. Post hoc ergo propter hoc . Or as many on /. like to say "Correlation is not causation".
I eat 6 much smaller, low carb, high protein/fat meals during my awake hours, no further apart than 3 hours. This keeps my blood sugar and insulin levels fairly steady, and has helped me lose weight and get completely off the Type 2 Diabetes medications (along with daily aerobic walking and moderate weight lifting). I plan to eat this way the rest of my life, since it has my blood chemistry, cholesterol, triglycerides, A1C/Glucose, blood pressure, weight and so on in a far more healthy range. How does Joel fit that in with his "loner" theory? If I eat breakfast after my morning walk at 7:30, then "second breakfast" at 10:30, lunch at 13:30, supper at 16:30 (typically my lightest meal of the day), dinner at 19:30, and a small snack at 22:30, I guess I just don' fit into his world.
Or Contempt - when will either of those be used against the lawyers in Righthaven, who apparently disregard the judge, and the rulings, and the law.
[AOL] Me too! [/AOL]
Man that just brought back memories...