Desiring your prefered platform to "win" is not about wanting to feel superior. It is about wanting your platform to gain enough market share that vendors produce products for that platform.
Also, 100 long term jobs throwing nuts and bolts in boxes paying 9$/hr ? or 50 jobs paying 75-125k/yr? I'd take those 50 jobs.
What people really want back are the days where those 100 long term jobs throwing nuts and bolts paid $25/hr with good benefits. But we are slowly learning those types of careers that unions helped create were actually temporary as well, because they priced our workers out of the world market and hastened the movement of jobs overseas.
But it is a very hard problem to solve. If you stop the easy college loans now, then today's 18 year olds will be screwed. Employers will still have plenty of 22+ year old workers that received degrees when they were easy to get, so they will simply pass over those who missed out on the subsidized loans.
So when does it stop? This is far from the only program like this. I'm willing to phase it out gradually, say over a decade. But it's getting worse pretty fast. Something needs to be done, and sooner is going to be less painful than later.
Well, we currently have two problems. The first is that our high schools are not turning out enough competent workers. At the moment our society really does need an oversupply of college graduates or else we would have a much less skilled workforce. Until we fix that problem, it would be detrimental to fix the problems caused by subsidized student loans.
Excessive student debt really is a problem, but at least that investment is increasing this country's human capital.
But it is a very hard problem to solve. If you stop the easy college loans now, then today's 18 year olds will be screwed. Employers will still have plenty of 22+ year old workers that received degrees when they were easy to get, so they will simply pass over those who missed out on the subsidized loans.
It would be great if most college students today could have the same opportunity to pay for their own schooling as you did. But that simply is not the case anymore (for most). College tuition has risen inflation adjusted about 400% in the last 25 years (so perhaps only 300% since you were in college). So to do what you did it would take 9 part-time jobs while doing their undergrad (an exaggeration I know, but you get my point).
The availability of loans have risen prices to the point where loans are almost necessary, just like with housing and automobiles.
The artificially inflated demand is a result of the increased number of college graduates, not merely a concurrent problem. Companies could not be requiring these degrees for secretary jobs if there wasn't an oversupply of college graduates.
But like others have said, because of the woeful nature of our high schools, more schooling really is needed to make many people adequate employees. And fixing this problem will take a long time, because even if we fixed high schools today it would take decades until companies could confidently hire people without degrees.
Sorry, you'd rather have the umpire rule incorrectly against your team sometimes, because it pisses you off when it happens, and you want sport to piss you off sometimes. Is that really what you're saying?
Hey, whatever it takes to actually enjoy watching baseball. Especially on TV, without the atmosphere that comes from watching any sporting event live.
Agreed. From my experience the lack of continuous integration, unit testing, and automated regression testing is the norm, but the lack of version control is simply inexcusable. It's not like it's a new startup or anything; if their tools are already unsupported for 5-7 years then they have been working this way for at least a decade.
Every job you take is an opportunity to build your skillsets and improve your career, and I find it unlikely that this job is the best place to do either. Unless you are able to quickly get management support in your efforts to improve development practices (which could significantly improve your abilities depending on how involved you were with those processes at your last job), I don't see why you would want to work there. I cannot imagine your coworkers are the best of the best, and your IT management probably has no idea how to run a software development group. (I have seen small companies in an uncompetitive niche do well despite such environments, but then again I also know someone who won the lottery)
Then again in this economy at least you are working, and who knows how good the IT industry is doing in your area.
Yes really. Pro-life is the more emotionally charged term because it casts the other side as anti-life, which is inaccurate. One side cares more for the life and well-being of the fetus, while the other cares more for the life, well-being, and freedom of the parent (you could argue for the freedom of the fetus too, but you aren't really taking control away from something that has no control over the situation in the first place).
On the other hand, pro-choice and anti-choice are both very accurate terms for portraying each side. If you think the term anti-choice is too negative, perhaps you should rethink your position.
His entire point was that Health Insurance in the US does not act like insurance at all. It works like managed health care. I'm sure he agrees with you that High Deductible Insurance is more like the traditional definition of insurance.
Those may be the steps taken so some administrators can have cushy jobs, but no one is really doing the work necessary to ensure accreditation means anything.
If they accepted you for a masters with a University of Phoenix bachelors, it isn't a real school...
I worried about this, which is why I talked with admissions at Northwestern and DePaul before starting at Phoenix. Both said it wouldn't be a problem, and sure enough I am at DePaul right now. It's not MIT or anything, but I definitely consider it a good school.
The federal government really needs to start regulating these "universities"
They do. Go learn about how accreditation works.
If you ever looked at the coursework at one of those online schools, you wouldn't think that accreditation was worth anything. Most of these online schools just build their program on top of a school that already has their accrediation.
While I have you, what would possess you to select the least-respected yet most expensive distance program around? Plenty of traditional brick-and-mortar colleges offer distance programs, many at a much lower price.
1) When I started taking classes there were not as many CS-related online bachelor's degree programs at brick-and-mortar schools. I knew how bad Devry Online was from two friends of mine, and was hoping UoP would be a bit better (it wasn't, it was even worse). 2) I was at the stage of my career where a bachelor's degree (especially online without direct access to professors) was basically just a peice of paper. At UoP I could finish my last two years in 50 weeks and get easily get a 4.0 GPA while working full time (which made getting into DePaul very easy). 3) Because UoP is just after your money, you can take out 3 years with of Stafford loans in a 12 month period (actually a little over 12 months, I took a short break during a very hectic work project). The Stafford loan program is so abusable it's rediculous.
Online classes won't show their real value until they are priced accordingly. Right now no one notices the high prices because taxpayers are just paying for everything through stafford loans. Online classes may never be as good their in-person counterparts, but once you can get most of the education included in a bachelors degree for a quarter the price of a brick and mortar school there may be real value there. Especially since you can get four years of job experience while getting the degree (well, in an economy where there are actual jobs for 20 year olds without a degree).
I agree with all of the points you make, which is why I think colleges should offer more night class oriented bachelor's degrees as opposed to online options. I got my bachelors from University of Phoenix (just so I could get my masters at a real school) and the education is abysmal. The federal government really needs to start regulating these "universities" because they are a complete waste of money for anyone who isn't just getting a peice of paper to show pointy haired bosses. But people keep going to these schools because traditional colleges do not cater to those who cannot just quit their job and go back to school (like me).
Local colleges that offer online classes with physical access to professors and teacher assistants would get most of the benefits of both venues. You can set up study groups, talk in person to your professors, but also have the flexibility of online programs. I agree that it wouldn't compete with truly great universities, but it is a great alternative to most schools out there.
We will eventually need to shift to a shorter work-week for the same relative pay
They have been promising this for a long time while pushing for increased productivity, but it is unlikely to ever happen. No matter how efficient you make your workers, you still want your best employees doing the work. The greater the productivity enhancements, the even greater demand you have for those few excellent employees. That is why you see the upper middle class growing even while the middle class as a whole shrinks.
Even if workers became 10x more productive, I would still just fire 90% of my workforce and have my all star employees pick up their work (assuming the whole industry has the same productivity gains and I cannot just compete better and grow the company). Those all star employees will be happy to have their salaries rise by 50% (just as they are today), but I still save a boat load of money. This has been happening for decades, but the excessive debt and accounting tricks made it unnoticeable until the recent recession. Companies are tightening their belts, and then realizing that they never really needed all of those dead weight employees they got rid of.
This will keep happening until we probably hit some kind of critical mass that causes an actual revolution led by the unemployed masses. We will just see if the military / police is robotic by then, so the top 1% can easily win that revolution.
I always find it odd that smart people think those who work out 10 hours a week, eat carefully, and take effort in upkeeping their appearance are just born with their looks. But then when they are able to breeze through school without studying and learn new things with little effort, that takes real skill.
I have done alot of tutoring along the years, and have seen people who work alot harder than me struggle on topics that came very naturally for me. I am not conceited enough to think I am successful just because of my hard work, while those who are successful because of "just" their looks had everything handed to them. I have had my fair share of luck too. Almost every very smart person I know (the "actual" geeks the article is mentioning) was largely born with the ability to learn faster than most people. Sure most of them worked hard too, but usually not as hard as the people who struggled through College Algebra.
The abilities you are born with are also going to primarily determine the areas you work on developing. If you are born athletic, you are more likely to spend effort on physical activities because it will provide you the most immediate payoff. And if you are born with higher intelligence, you will spend more time reading books.
When I read your post, it sounded like you were describing some of the best trends in software development (not problems). Having designers take control of the user experience away from the developers is a good thing in my opinion. Unless they suck at their job, of course, but the same can be said of developers.
These days, however, we're seeing the "designers" deciding how UIs, and even the software as a whole, are to behave, from beginning to end. The software developer is there to merely implement whatever the "designer" wants, without any ability or power to make decisions themselves.
Hallelujah. Thank god designers and business analysts are keeping developers from creating horrible interfaces and forcing unusable workflows on end users. I don't think you see too many developers complaining that they aren't allowed to fumble around with user interface design anymore.
This is exactly what we've seen from each organization and group that you mentioned. Apple, for example...
Are you honestly using the best example of designers having a bigger impact on a successful company than developers to illustrate designers run amok? Does anyone dispute that it's the aesthetic excellence of Apple products that has made it into a successful company, as opposed to technical excellence?
It's time for software developers to make the decisions, rather than "designers". The priorities and concerns of the software developers are much better aligned with those of the actual users. The applications may not look as pretty, but that's easily ignored if they work well.
I could not disagree more. As the software development field continues to mature, the last thing we should do is go back to the dark ages when software developers were primarily responsible with the user experience. Keep us doing what we are good at: implementing the great ideas of great designers and UX experts.
Sometimes when I hear comments like this I am reminded of IT people complaining about the terms "hackers" and "crackers" being used incorrectly. And like the hacker terminology debate, it isn't slashdotter's opinions that matter. In this case it is most likely hiring managers and college administrators (at least its not the press this time).
Just take the CLEP tests if those Gen-Ed classes really have no value for you. You can complete almost your entire first two years of schooling with those tests. I just finished up going back to school (harder to move up now without a BS degree), and I saved a boat load of time and money taking CLEP tests for Gen-Ed classes that I didn't finish in community college a decade ago.
For truly well rounded self educated people, they should be a breeze. If it is hard to pass them, then you really do need those Gen-Ed classes (those areas of knowledge really do have value). But plenty of people who actually like to read (non-fiction) have no need to waste their time in 100-level Humanities classes.
Why is community college regarded as such a horrible alternative? You get taught by actual teachers and not just graduate student TAs. I have taken fresh/soph classes at a public university and public community college, and the quality of education was much higher at the community college.
Im curious, if Google is essentially just using Ireland to create shell companies to reduce taxes, is Ireland really providing Google any real services? Such as an educated workforce, good infrastructure, etc.? If not, shouldn't Ireland be grateful if they get even $10 in taxes from Google each year?
Companies pay as little as they believe they can get away with. Perhaps the word "demand" has some inappropriate connotations, but highly paid professionals aren't given their salaries because of corporate charity.
And I agree that minimum wage will not be lowered, but hopefully government will eventually learn to stop raising it (and effectively let it become lower based on inflation). Otherwise US workers will just have to deal with more of their jobs being sent overseas.
No it doesn't. Poor people buy less and if you do something sensible like not tax necessary foods like veg and meat then they can avoid sales tax on their food and eat healthier.
I am generally against the Fair Tax, just because it is very easy to see that it hurts the poor and middle class and only benefits the rich. But you propose a very good idea about not taxing food.
If the Fair Tax included no taxes on food, utilities, or housing (rent or mortgage payments) then it would definetly be something I would support. No one would be taxed for essentials; just for their cars, clothes, electronics, etc. It would be fair without putting a significant burden on the poor.
If you make below the poverty limit, you get a 100% refund of the taxes
This just subsidizes McDonald and Wallmart's bottom line. Ideally, there should be no refund on taxes, and a higher minimum wage to compensate. Much simpler and fairer, and it isn't corporate welfare in disguise.
It is the government's job to decide how much welfare to give workers without the skillsets to demand higher contribution from their employers. Expecting govermnents to provide for thier citizen's welfare is not corportate welfare. Corporations are already forced to contribute to public welfare with minimum wage laws.
Anyone making close to minimum wage is on welfare, it is just indirectly given through the use of regulations (minimum wage laws instead of welfare checks / food stamps). This is the opposite of subsidizing McDonalds and Walmart's bottom lines. They are fighting against government policies while providing jobs for those with very few skills.
Slashdot Mirror
Desiring your prefered platform to "win" is not about wanting to feel superior. It is about wanting your platform to gain enough market share that vendors produce products for that platform.
Also, 100 long term jobs throwing nuts and bolts in boxes paying 9$/hr ? or 50 jobs paying 75-125k/yr? I'd take those 50 jobs.
What people really want back are the days where those 100 long term jobs throwing nuts and bolts paid $25/hr with good benefits. But we are slowly learning those types of careers that unions helped create were actually temporary as well, because they priced our workers out of the world market and hastened the movement of jobs overseas.
But it is a very hard problem to solve. If you stop the easy college loans now, then today's 18 year olds will be screwed. Employers will still have plenty of 22+ year old workers that received degrees when they were easy to get, so they will simply pass over those who missed out on the subsidized loans.
So when does it stop? This is far from the only program like this. I'm willing to phase it out gradually, say over a decade. But it's getting worse pretty fast. Something needs to be done, and sooner is going to be less painful than later.
Well, we currently have two problems. The first is that our high schools are not turning out enough competent workers. At the moment our society really does need an oversupply of college graduates or else we would have a much less skilled workforce. Until we fix that problem, it would be detrimental to fix the problems caused by subsidized student loans.
Excessive student debt really is a problem, but at least that investment is increasing this country's human capital.
But it is a very hard problem to solve. If you stop the easy college loans now, then today's 18 year olds will be screwed. Employers will still have plenty of 22+ year old workers that received degrees when they were easy to get, so they will simply pass over those who missed out on the subsidized loans.
It would be great if most college students today could have the same opportunity to pay for their own schooling as you did. But that simply is not the case anymore (for most). College tuition has risen inflation adjusted about 400% in the last 25 years (so perhaps only 300% since you were in college). So to do what you did it would take 9 part-time jobs while doing their undergrad (an exaggeration I know, but you get my point).
The availability of loans have risen prices to the point where loans are almost necessary, just like with housing and automobiles.
The artificially inflated demand is a result of the increased number of college graduates, not merely a concurrent problem. Companies could not be requiring these degrees for secretary jobs if there wasn't an oversupply of college graduates.
But like others have said, because of the woeful nature of our high schools, more schooling really is needed to make many people adequate employees. And fixing this problem will take a long time, because even if we fixed high schools today it would take decades until companies could confidently hire people without degrees.
Sorry, you'd rather have the umpire rule incorrectly against your team sometimes, because it pisses you off when it happens, and you want sport to piss you off sometimes. Is that really what you're saying?
Hey, whatever it takes to actually enjoy watching baseball. Especially on TV, without the atmosphere that comes from watching any sporting event live.
Agreed. From my experience the lack of continuous integration, unit testing, and automated regression testing is the norm, but the lack of version control is simply inexcusable. It's not like it's a new startup or anything; if their tools are already unsupported for 5-7 years then they have been working this way for at least a decade.
Every job you take is an opportunity to build your skillsets and improve your career, and I find it unlikely that this job is the best place to do either. Unless you are able to quickly get management support in your efforts to improve development practices (which could significantly improve your abilities depending on how involved you were with those processes at your last job), I don't see why you would want to work there. I cannot imagine your coworkers are the best of the best, and your IT management probably has no idea how to run a software development group. (I have seen small companies in an uncompetitive niche do well despite such environments, but then again I also know someone who won the lottery)
Then again in this economy at least you are working, and who knows how good the IT industry is doing in your area.
("anti-choice"? Really? Grow up already).
Yes really. Pro-life is the more emotionally charged term because it casts the other side as anti-life, which is inaccurate. One side cares more for the life and well-being of the fetus, while the other cares more for the life, well-being, and freedom of the parent (you could argue for the freedom of the fetus too, but you aren't really taking control away from something that has no control over the situation in the first place).
On the other hand, pro-choice and anti-choice are both very accurate terms for portraying each side. If you think the term anti-choice is too negative, perhaps you should rethink your position.
His entire point was that Health Insurance in the US does not act like insurance at all. It works like managed health care. I'm sure he agrees with you that High Deductible Insurance is more like the traditional definition of insurance.
Those may be the steps taken so some administrators can have cushy jobs, but no one is really doing the work necessary to ensure accreditation means anything.
If they accepted you for a masters with a University of Phoenix bachelors, it isn't a real school...
I worried about this, which is why I talked with admissions at Northwestern and DePaul before starting at Phoenix. Both said it wouldn't be a problem, and sure enough I am at DePaul right now. It's not MIT or anything, but I definitely consider it a good school.
The federal government really needs to start regulating these "universities"
They do. Go learn about how accreditation works.
If you ever looked at the coursework at one of those online schools, you wouldn't think that accreditation was worth anything. Most of these online schools just build their program on top of a school that already has their accrediation.
While I have you, what would possess you to select the least-respected yet most expensive distance program around? Plenty of traditional brick-and-mortar colleges offer distance programs, many at a much lower price.
1) When I started taking classes there were not as many CS-related online bachelor's degree programs at brick-and-mortar schools. I knew how bad Devry Online was from two friends of mine, and was hoping UoP would be a bit better (it wasn't, it was even worse).
2) I was at the stage of my career where a bachelor's degree (especially online without direct access to professors) was basically just a peice of paper. At UoP I could finish my last two years in 50 weeks and get easily get a 4.0 GPA while working full time (which made getting into DePaul very easy).
3) Because UoP is just after your money, you can take out 3 years with of Stafford loans in a 12 month period (actually a little over 12 months, I took a short break during a very hectic work project). The Stafford loan program is so abusable it's rediculous.
Online classes won't show their real value until they are priced accordingly. Right now no one notices the high prices because taxpayers are just paying for everything through stafford loans. Online classes may never be as good their in-person counterparts, but once you can get most of the education included in a bachelors degree for a quarter the price of a brick and mortar school there may be real value there. Especially since you can get four years of job experience while getting the degree (well, in an economy where there are actual jobs for 20 year olds without a degree).
I agree with all of the points you make, which is why I think colleges should offer more night class oriented bachelor's degrees as opposed to online options. I got my bachelors from University of Phoenix (just so I could get my masters at a real school) and the education is abysmal. The federal government really needs to start regulating these "universities" because they are a complete waste of money for anyone who isn't just getting a peice of paper to show pointy haired bosses. But people keep going to these schools because traditional colleges do not cater to those who cannot just quit their job and go back to school (like me).
Local colleges that offer online classes with physical access to professors and teacher assistants would get most of the benefits of both venues. You can set up study groups, talk in person to your professors, but also have the flexibility of online programs. I agree that it wouldn't compete with truly great universities, but it is a great alternative to most schools out there.
We will eventually need to shift to a shorter work-week for the same relative pay
They have been promising this for a long time while pushing for increased productivity, but it is unlikely to ever happen. No matter how efficient you make your workers, you still want your best employees doing the work. The greater the productivity enhancements, the even greater demand you have for those few excellent employees. That is why you see the upper middle class growing even while the middle class as a whole shrinks.
Even if workers became 10x more productive, I would still just fire 90% of my workforce and have my all star employees pick up their work (assuming the whole industry has the same productivity gains and I cannot just compete better and grow the company). Those all star employees will be happy to have their salaries rise by 50% (just as they are today), but I still save a boat load of money. This has been happening for decades, but the excessive debt and accounting tricks made it unnoticeable until the recent recession. Companies are tightening their belts, and then realizing that they never really needed all of those dead weight employees they got rid of.
This will keep happening until we probably hit some kind of critical mass that causes an actual revolution led by the unemployed masses. We will just see if the military / police is robotic by then, so the top 1% can easily win that revolution.
I always find it odd that smart people think those who work out 10 hours a week, eat carefully, and take effort in upkeeping their appearance are just born with their looks. But then when they are able to breeze through school without studying and learn new things with little effort, that takes real skill.
I have done alot of tutoring along the years, and have seen people who work alot harder than me struggle on topics that came very naturally for me. I am not conceited enough to think I am successful just because of my hard work, while those who are successful because of "just" their looks had everything handed to them. I have had my fair share of luck too. Almost every very smart person I know (the "actual" geeks the article is mentioning) was largely born with the ability to learn faster than most people. Sure most of them worked hard too, but usually not as hard as the people who struggled through College Algebra.
The abilities you are born with are also going to primarily determine the areas you work on developing. If you are born athletic, you are more likely to spend effort on physical activities because it will provide you the most immediate payoff. And if you are born with higher intelligence, you will spend more time reading books.
When I read your post, it sounded like you were describing some of the best trends in software development (not problems). Having designers take control of the user experience away from the developers is a good thing in my opinion. Unless they suck at their job, of course, but the same can be said of developers.
These days, however, we're seeing the "designers" deciding how UIs, and even the software as a whole, are to behave, from beginning to end. The software developer is there to merely implement whatever the "designer" wants, without any ability or power to make decisions themselves.
Hallelujah. Thank god designers and business analysts are keeping developers from creating horrible interfaces and forcing unusable workflows on end users. I don't think you see too many developers complaining that they aren't allowed to fumble around with user interface design anymore.
This is exactly what we've seen from each organization and group that you mentioned. Apple, for example ...
Are you honestly using the best example of designers having a bigger impact on a successful company than developers to illustrate designers run amok? Does anyone dispute that it's the aesthetic excellence of Apple products that has made it into a successful company, as opposed to technical excellence?
It's time for software developers to make the decisions, rather than "designers". The priorities and concerns of the software developers are much better aligned with those of the actual users. The applications may not look as pretty, but that's easily ignored if they work well.
I could not disagree more. As the software development field continues to mature, the last thing we should do is go back to the dark ages when software developers were primarily responsible with the user experience. Keep us doing what we are good at: implementing the great ideas of great designers and UX experts.
Sometimes when I hear comments like this I am reminded of IT people complaining about the terms "hackers" and "crackers" being used incorrectly. And like the hacker terminology debate, it isn't slashdotter's opinions that matter. In this case it is most likely hiring managers and college administrators (at least its not the press this time).
Just take the CLEP tests if those Gen-Ed classes really have no value for you. You can complete almost your entire first two years of schooling with those tests. I just finished up going back to school (harder to move up now without a BS degree), and I saved a boat load of time and money taking CLEP tests for Gen-Ed classes that I didn't finish in community college a decade ago.
For truly well rounded self educated people, they should be a breeze. If it is hard to pass them, then you really do need those Gen-Ed classes (those areas of knowledge really do have value). But plenty of people who actually like to read (non-fiction) have no need to waste their time in 100-level Humanities classes.
Why is community college regarded as such a horrible alternative? You get taught by actual teachers and not just graduate student TAs. I have taken fresh/soph classes at a public university and public community college, and the quality of education was much higher at the community college.
Im curious, if Google is essentially just using Ireland to create shell companies to reduce taxes, is Ireland really providing Google any real services? Such as an educated workforce, good infrastructure, etc.? If not, shouldn't Ireland be grateful if they get even $10 in taxes from Google each year?
Companies pay as little as they believe they can get away with. Perhaps the word "demand" has some inappropriate connotations, but highly paid professionals aren't given their salaries because of corporate charity.
And I agree that minimum wage will not be lowered, but hopefully government will eventually learn to stop raising it (and effectively let it become lower based on inflation). Otherwise US workers will just have to deal with more of their jobs being sent overseas.
No it doesn't. Poor people buy less and if you do something sensible like not tax necessary foods like veg and meat then they can avoid sales tax on their food and eat healthier.
I am generally against the Fair Tax, just because it is very easy to see that it hurts the poor and middle class and only benefits the rich. But you propose a very good idea about not taxing food.
If the Fair Tax included no taxes on food, utilities, or housing (rent or mortgage payments) then it would definetly be something I would support. No one would be taxed for essentials; just for their cars, clothes, electronics, etc. It would be fair without putting a significant burden on the poor.
If you make below the poverty limit, you get a 100% refund of the taxes
This just subsidizes McDonald and Wallmart's bottom line. Ideally, there should be no refund on taxes, and a higher minimum wage to compensate. Much simpler and fairer, and it isn't corporate welfare in disguise.
It is the government's job to decide how much welfare to give workers without the skillsets to demand higher contribution from their employers. Expecting govermnents to provide for thier citizen's welfare is not corportate welfare. Corporations are already forced to contribute to public welfare with minimum wage laws.
Anyone making close to minimum wage is on welfare, it is just indirectly given through the use of regulations (minimum wage laws instead of welfare checks / food stamps). This is the opposite of subsidizing McDonalds and Walmart's bottom lines. They are fighting against government policies while providing jobs for those with very few skills.