Ah, so retinal implants will pretty much guarantee that I won't even be able to tell if someone is actually paying attention or listening, even if they are staring right back at me in an apparent attempt to look engaged in physical conversation with another human being.
If you are having a conversation with someone where all they have to do is nod and smile every once in a while to make you think they are listening, they are not the problem. Perhaps this technology will help stop people from wasting others' time with meaningless conversation. Small talk may cease to exist.
Try telling that to the students who have had an appalling low standard of education because of the 90-99% failure rate of all the new things they had tried on them.
I have not read any studies which claim a significant number of these new techniques are creating an appallingly lower standard of education than the students would have gotten otherwise. In contrast the most damning criticism is usually that they techniques had no effect. In my opinion, this isn't because the new techniques are that good. It is because it is really hard to do worse than the status quo.
Nobody would accept a 90-99% failure rate for medical innovations which get as far as being tried on patients!
Depends on the possible side effects and depends on the most likely outcome using conventional medicine. If I have a 100% of dying, a 2% chance of success is starting to look pretty good. And if the worse thing that could happen is a little diarrhea, a 10% chance of completely curing a disease also sounds really good.
there is really no way to determine whether a new technique is effective other than to try it on students. So while education is more risk tolerant than medicine it is nowhere near as risk tolerant as VC industry funding.
Many new educational techniques can be tried out in a very agile manner. Even conventional education tries new ideas constantly, just usually with a less scale-able and less ambitious approach. Initial trials of a single lecture or single lesson plan, measured with a single test, can provide initial indications of success at scale.
Just as you don't test a new CRM app with a large scale deployment at a Fortune 100 company, you don't have to test a new educational technique by changing an entire State's teaching standards over night. All of this can be, and already is, tested on a much smaller scale.
There's an interesting statistic that shows computer science professors are the least likely to use learning software like Blackboard. Why? It's not because they don't understand the technology. It's because they've already integrated web pages, email and other technology into their teaching, and are justifiably skeptical about the push-button "solutions" like Blackboard.
This explanation for why they don't use push-button solutions like Blackboard is what gives me hope for finding new education innovations. Because they are still integrating technology, they are just doing it on a more personal and customize-able level. Current innovations mostly go for low hanging fruit, which usually involve simplistic and push-button solutions. But as adoption grows and skepticism subsides, innovations will become far more specific. That takes more funding and a higher chance of failure, so the industry just isn't that mature yet.
I might agree that most of the problem isn't buzzwords, but it's also not lack of understanding. It's skepticism. These "new teaching methods" are unproven, and lots of them are starting to show the cracks in their shiny. Just yesterday we had a story about Udacity not living up to expectations.
I agree that skepticism is the root of the problem, but education can also help with that. For one, most people feel that if 90% of educational innovations provide no benefit, that is a failure of the industry. But in my opinion, if even 1% of these innovations are effective and scale-able, it will be revolutionary. As long as the other 99% at least don't hurt education.
The education industry could learn a lot from the angel / VC funding industry. You only need 1-10% successes to make the 90-99% failures worth it as long as the success are sufficiently scale-able. There are 50 million new students (in the US alone) each decade who can take advantage of even the smallest innovation that comes from companies trying to change things.
Instead most educators, and skeptics in other industries, focus on the 90+% of attempts that fail. Citing some story about Udacity failing would be similar to citing the failure of Friendster when claiming no social media company could ever be successful. Stopping people from thinking this way is one way education can solve this rampant skepticism of educational innovation.
More creative? I'd think it would lead to more groupthink. Creativity is when someone goes off the beaten path and does something new a different.
I'm of the belief that there are no truly original ideas, just new combinations of old ideas. The more old ideas you know the more creative you can be. This is just an opinion though.
I also think group think is more of a problem among the uneducated. I doubt making knowledge more available will increase group think, although I agree it will certainly not get rid of it either.
they are quite literally incapable of normal conversation without involving the smartphone because it has become a part of their thought processes.
At some point Ray Kurzweil's vision of a connected brain will be a reality, and we will literally be able to use external computation in our regular thought patterns. Information retrieval is only the beginning; soon* these devices will help us be more creative by loaning us extra neurons when we need them.
I don't buy the idea that imprecise buzzwords are the root of this problem. It seems an overall lack of understanding of new teaching methods is the problem.
The first half of the article talks about how people don't know what these buzzwords mean. But the second half doesn't even mention buzzwords again. It talks about a societal gap between current educators and education innovators. This is a problem I can agree is slowing adoption.
Within 20 years we will probably have contact lenses or even retinal implants that allow us to interact with technology at any time and without anyone noticing. Learning to deal with people looking at their cell phones during conversation is a good way to help transition society to a time when you can't assume 100% of someone's attention just because they are standing next to you.
Now the loud cell phone behavior is just being a jerk though.
Fair market pricing implies that the more money you have, the more important you are and is best used for resources that are perceived as a luxury. Of course this can be argued about all day, but it's not shocking that some people would find fair-market pricing to be inherently unfair.
They find it unfair because they spend too much time focusing on the minuscule number of people who have so much money that market prices don't affect them. Yes there are some people who have so much money that a $100 cab ride is the same as a $10 cab ride. Lets call them the 1%. But the vast majority of people, lets call them the 99%, will alter behavior based on pricing. I don't want to go into the math in too much detail, but there are far more people in the 99% than in the 1%.
I am a member of the top 5%, and I still budget my money. I still usually buy fruit based on what is in season, and plan my weekly meals based on what is on sale at the supermarket. And I would also think twice about using Uber for a frivolous trip if surge pricing has made it more expensive than normal, thus freeing up drivers for those who need them more.
Now when he starts screaming about capital gains being taxed higher, then I'll start listening to him.
This is precisely what he has been screaming about. Here is the first article you will find if you google for "warren buffett capital gains tax": A Minimum Tax for the Wealthy. It was written by Warren Buffett in 2012. When he talks the decades when our capital gains taxes were almost double what they are now, he says "Never did anyone mention taxes as a reason to forgo an investment opportunity that I offered.
He does want excessive incomes derived from capital gains to be taxed higher, so are you listening now?
Bootstrapping a startup is a common way to start down the entrepreneurial path. And I doubt it is uncommon for these founders to spend no time during their 9-5 working on their new company. This may be as obvious as coding or answering tech support emails at work, or as subtle as reading articles on LinkedIn about angel investing.
I would love to know how old you are. Betting early 30's at best. You sound like naive yet think you have a world of knowledge.
I specifically said I was 35 in my post. Did you read the whole thing? I also stated how my opinions have been based on experiences from past coworkers in both their 30's and 40's. I don't know anyone in their 50's+ who has been laid off, although I have probably only worked with at most a dozen IT workers in that age bracket (not counting upper management types). Considering the IT industry as we know it has only been around about 25 years, it would be odd for there to be too many 50+ year old workers even without age discrimination.
If you are in your 30's or early 40's and get fired, why the F would somebody hire you unless they are truly desperate?
Because you want someone who knows what they are doing. The few people I know in their early to mid 20's are the ones finding it hard to break into the tech industry; at least in the Midwest that is. In a more startup friendly culture like the valley I assume it would be very different. Based on the 20-30 yr old coworkers I have had in the last few years, I have no fear of being able to convince a potential employer I am more valuable than they are. At least until they too get 10 years of experience.
Being laid off because the company has major layoffs or ceases to exist is one thing - fired for cause is another.
I have never known a quality IT worker that was fired for cause. It is so damn hard to find quality IT workers that employers will deal with a lot of shit before canning them.
For those over 45, many leave the industry after 6 months when they can't find work because it's been offshored or preference is given to a fresh grad at 1/2 the salary and where the cost of benefits is significantly less than that of an older "at risk" person.
Quality employers don't care that much about the higher salaries of the senior and director level IT staff they employ. Because good IT workers are the ones who make their bosses look great, and facilitate them getting their big bonuses. When a project is being run like shit and is about to miss a milestone that will reflect badly on our CTO, he wants someone like me who can simply get things done. Then when bonus time comes around he is glad to give me a quarter of a junior dev's salary just in bonus. In fact the only thing on his mind is making sure he doesn't lose me for the next time shit hits the fan (and I am not some special snowflake, there are other quality senior IT resources out there, although they are rare).
Finding a job in your 30's and even to mid-40's is relatively easy. You are, typically, at a point in your life where you can afford to move, live a little more carefree lifestyle and, perhaps, might just be starting a family...perhaps, you have bought your first "starter" house. It isn't so easy after 45 and damn near impossible, as a "tech" worker after 50 when your kids are growing up, entering college or trying to truly prepare for retirement.
Not sure how late you started your family, but most IT workers in their mid-40's already have a kid in high school. I am paying for daycare now, and at $1700 per month per kid it is just as expensive as college (and without 18 years to save up for it). So I can't wait until my kids are in college so their college funds can pay for it instead of my paychecks. With a large home in a great school district, two kids in daycare, college loans I'm still paying, and a wife who buys all her athletic gear at lululemon, I am well aware of how much my family needs our $200k+ household income.
People who are still in their early careers don't realize how vulnerable they become when they get older. People like you are truly part of the problem. My suggestion, plan for the future... from someone who thought like you and now
Please, spare me the fairy tale that "if you have the skills, there's work for yoy," when you are unemployed in tech, you are damaged goods -"if he was any good, he'd have a job." (Kids, always have another job queued up.)
Please spare me the fairy tale that "even if you have the skills, its hard to find jobs in tech." I know four highly skilled IT workers in their 30's and 40's that have been fired or laid off in the last couple of years. Every one of them found work within a month. I know two mediocre IT workers in their 30's who were fired or laid off in the last few years, and one found work in a couple months (with a promotion to senior dev) and the other took four months. I do know a handful of tech workers who no longer work in tech because they couldn't find work, but they were never someone I would hire based on their ability.
And I live in the Midwest, not some west coast IT paradise. The simple fact is we are currently in a sellers market, and if you are good you can set your own rates. I was unsatisfied with the projects I was being given about 6 months ago, and got my acceptance letter from a new company within 3 weeks from the start of my job search. With about a 20% raise. Although I am only 35, so I guess according to you its all downhill from here.
Without changes to diet or doing any exercise I think your options are pretty much limited to violating the laws of thermodynamics.
Well that is pretty silly. Different people can have very different base metabolism rates. There is plenty of science to figure out when it comes to why two people can have the same weight, body composition, diet, and exercise levels and lose/gain different amounts of fat. And the differences can be very extreme between two people.
At some point we will almost certainly figure out how to give anyone the same metabolism as the best metabolism human genetics has given us an example of so far. And probably even better. Maybe this takes 200 years, maybe it takes 5, but it will happen. And plenty of people will lose dozens of pounds with no effort at all by using this technology.
Considering they are only paying $1 per license on average each year, framing the problem with a license per employee count is very misleading. The article should have focused on them spending $200 yearly on licenses per staff member. Or under $17 per month per staff member. Doesn't sound nearly as bad in this context, but then again the true point of the article was to get page views. This shows why I'm not in marketing.
I doubt it - a year of p/maternity leave is actually a legal requirement in places like Canada. Finding a way to fire someone after returning would get a company into very hot water very quickly. However, depending on your company, you do not get your full salary for the year and it drops after some number of months to the statutory p/maternity leave pay. I took a week off when our kids were born without any issues.
This is a different type of workplace than your average office. For women in high powered careers, it can be hard on their career to even take the more standard 3-5 months off. Their projects aren't going to wait for them to get back, and it can be hard to transition back into those projects when someone else has owned them for months. For people who take care of their career, their job isn't just about a paycheck. The most important part of their job is their list of achievements which can get them to the next level of their career. They may keep their salary and title regardless of how long their maternity leave is, but their potential to move up in their career after an extended absence is still diminished.
Infants still require far more attention from parents than toddlers do. Unless you have a unicorn baby, their sleep schedule for the first 3-6 months will be very sporadic which will restrict the parents' sleep. This sleep interruption is the primary difficult aspect of being a new parent. I recently saw a survey which asked what parents missed most about their pre-child life, and obviously it said not to say "sleep" since they didn't want the results to be unanimous.
Infants also require more attention since they are less able to self soothe and keep themselves entertained. They cannot be unsupervised unless asleep. If a two year old is given the same level of parental attention that an infant requires, the toddler would never break anything. They simply would never be left alone long enough to break anything.
My one year old may be running around now and causing havoc, but she is still far easier to handle now that she can actually play with her toys for 15 minutes in a row without needing me or my wife.
If its a year per kid, I'd be tempted to keep having kids. If that catches on, we might wonder if Netflix is encouraging rapid population growth.
The factor that allows Netflix (and more recently Microsoft) to offer these kinds of benefits is their constant push to only hire and retain top talent. If Netflix felt their employees were more average, they may fear abuse. But these are employees who have spent their adult life attaining the highest level of achievement and are unlikely to let this slip away. I read one article recently that wondered how many Netflix employees would actually take more than the standard three months off (standard among professionals, not the entire population). The more time away from their job the more chance their department starts moving on without them.
Also notice that Netflix employees in distribution centers don't get this benefit. Only their most valuable and skilled employees qualify.
Your situation is very uncommon. You have a very contrived example where you live in a remote area with no competition, and where recent forest fires have shown it is not very cost effective for humans to live there at all. Your insurance company may be taking advantage of you, or they could simply be realizing how costly it will be to pay out claims during the next forest fire. If the only competition in your town is charging around $5000 per year for a $100k house (estimated based on the numbers you gave), there would plenty of insurance companies fighting to undercut them unless there is good reason the rates are so high.
Like the summary says, nuclear weapons require expensive and hard to obtain raw materials and a significant amount of technology not common in the civilian space. This is the only reason, IMHO, that nuclear proliferation treaties work as well as they do. How does this group expect governments to keep a lid on military tech that relies on ubiquitous technology found throughout the civilian economy?
Computer Science is a vocationally oriented topic.
Language, Arts, History, Math, and Basic Science are all core topics. As such CS is not a necessary part of the foundation, but a facet to come later for those who want/need it. But everyone needs the foundation.
There was a time when learning to read was not a core subject for children. Learning to fix their own clothes and grow food was more important. And I doubt many people thought algebra should be a core subject 100 years ago. Times change and so do core educational topics.
Like it or not there is at least a good argument for the general population having a deeper understanding of computing in the coming decades. Knowing how to understand a data model and manipulate data, understanding web technologies, knowing how to write simple scripts, etc. may be more necessary than knowing long division for a large percentage of the population 20 years from now. And that is the workplace we are teaching current students to be a part of.
In my child's middle school they also teach Environmental Science, humanitarianism, HIV/Aids Prevention and various other politically motivated subjects as core curriculum, such that kids are not able to take enriching classes such as music or art.
I seriously doubt your child's school has a year long or even semester long course whose sole purpose is teaching HIV/Aids prevention. Perhaps they have a health class which covers sexually transmitted diseases for a couple weeks, but that is not the same thing as core curriculum.
And it is very sad that someone would think teaching children about the environment and humanitarianism is only part of a political agenda, instead of being important topics for any school. I am glad your children are getting another viewpoint other than just what they are hearing at home.
Arts and foreign language are probably more important than computer science at the K-12 level.
While I'm not saying you are wrong, but that is very arguable. I for instance think computer science is far more important than foreign language at any grade level. I computer science is less important than art for K-5, but more important than art after that. These are just my opinions, and I'm sure plenty of people and even researchers have different opinions in this discussion.
If you want to include computer science without deleting existing core subjects, it will cost more money and class time. Are you willing to pay more in taxes to support schools? Are you willing to extend the class day and academic year so there is time to teach all these subjects? I am willing to accept those changes but to add comp sci without those changes will be destructive.
Although I am a bad person to ask here, because I am very willing to pay more in taxes to support more schooling. Both longer days and longer school years. I happen to live in an area where our taxes provide over $20k per student to our primary and secondary schools, and once my kids are at school ages (11 months and -7 months now) they will likely have access to academic rigorous summer programs (which I'm happy to pay for).
Based on the total number of core classes now, I doubt including computer science would add more than 5% of coursework over a year. That comes to less than $100 in extra taxes per year per citizen.
From what I have been able to find, the set of core academic subjects is already much larger than you think. It isn't just English, Math, Science, History. From an archived No Child Left Behind FAQ I found (source), here is a list of current core academic subjects (it may have changed since this documents first publishing):
English, reading or language arts, math, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, arts, history and geography
I see no reason why computer science (at a primary/secondary school level) shouldn't be at least equally important as foreign languages, arts, and geography.
As a hiring manager, I'm given a number and that's what I get to hire someone with. If someone asks for more, I can usually try to accommodate, but if you want 100K and I can only give you 80K, then it comes down to whether you want the job or not.
The thing is, you as the hiring manager are not really the problem. You really have been given instructions and limitations by your bosses and probably don't have the authority to ignore them. People complain about their boss not paying them enough because that is their primary liaison with the executives. But many times it is those executives who shoulder more of the responsibility for uneven pay.
That said, your comments don't change anything regarding whether or not employees are getting short changed. You may have your hands tied, but someone in your organization doesn't. Prices can be altered, outside funding can be acquired, executive and managerial pay can be adjusted, commission structures can be adjusted, lower quality employees can be let go, etc. Or your boss can simply give you a budget of $80k for a new hire regardless of how much it really costs for a quality applicant.
What I don't think is that you should consider what someone else makes to be a reflection on what the company thinks of *you*. If you're capable, you may start lower, but I'd probably be happy to see you become a manager or advanced individual contributor where that other guy will never get higher than he is today. You'll start at 80K, but you'll someday get to 150K whereas the other guy will never see the other side of 110. Alternately, you could be selected for more training opportunities or given more interesting work. All of that turns into more money too, either at that work place or at another place you move to later.
This I completely agree with. It generally only applies to people with no other options though. Someone with options will just take a job with someone else who is paying $100k. If there is no other person willing to pay that, then this employee really is only worth $80k. At least as a new hire that is. Plenty of people are horrible interviewees or horrible negotiators and generally start at a lower salary because of it. These employees must rely on proving themselves and getting promotions.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, so retinal implants will pretty much guarantee that I won't even be able to tell if someone is actually paying attention or listening, even if they are staring right back at me in an apparent attempt to look engaged in physical conversation with another human being.
If you are having a conversation with someone where all they have to do is nod and smile every once in a while to make you think they are listening, they are not the problem. Perhaps this technology will help stop people from wasting others' time with meaningless conversation. Small talk may cease to exist.
Try telling that to the students who have had an appalling low standard of education because of the 90-99% failure rate of all the new things they had tried on them.
I have not read any studies which claim a significant number of these new techniques are creating an appallingly lower standard of education than the students would have gotten otherwise. In contrast the most damning criticism is usually that they techniques had no effect. In my opinion, this isn't because the new techniques are that good. It is because it is really hard to do worse than the status quo.
Nobody would accept a 90-99% failure rate for medical innovations which get as far as being tried on patients!
Depends on the possible side effects and depends on the most likely outcome using conventional medicine. If I have a 100% of dying, a 2% chance of success is starting to look pretty good. And if the worse thing that could happen is a little diarrhea, a 10% chance of completely curing a disease also sounds really good.
there is really no way to determine whether a new technique is effective other than to try it on students. So while education is more risk tolerant than medicine it is nowhere near as risk tolerant as VC industry funding.
Many new educational techniques can be tried out in a very agile manner. Even conventional education tries new ideas constantly, just usually with a less scale-able and less ambitious approach. Initial trials of a single lecture or single lesson plan, measured with a single test, can provide initial indications of success at scale.
Just as you don't test a new CRM app with a large scale deployment at a Fortune 100 company, you don't have to test a new educational technique by changing an entire State's teaching standards over night. All of this can be, and already is, tested on a much smaller scale.
There's an interesting statistic that shows computer science professors are the least likely to use learning software like Blackboard. Why? It's not because they don't understand the technology. It's because they've already integrated web pages, email and other technology into their teaching, and are justifiably skeptical about the push-button "solutions" like Blackboard.
This explanation for why they don't use push-button solutions like Blackboard is what gives me hope for finding new education innovations. Because they are still integrating technology, they are just doing it on a more personal and customize-able level. Current innovations mostly go for low hanging fruit, which usually involve simplistic and push-button solutions. But as adoption grows and skepticism subsides, innovations will become far more specific. That takes more funding and a higher chance of failure, so the industry just isn't that mature yet.
Or at least that is my hope.
I might agree that most of the problem isn't buzzwords, but it's also not lack of understanding. It's skepticism. These "new teaching methods" are unproven, and lots of them are starting to show the cracks in their shiny. Just yesterday we had a story about Udacity not living up to expectations.
I agree that skepticism is the root of the problem, but education can also help with that. For one, most people feel that if 90% of educational innovations provide no benefit, that is a failure of the industry. But in my opinion, if even 1% of these innovations are effective and scale-able, it will be revolutionary. As long as the other 99% at least don't hurt education.
The education industry could learn a lot from the angel / VC funding industry. You only need 1-10% successes to make the 90-99% failures worth it as long as the success are sufficiently scale-able. There are 50 million new students (in the US alone) each decade who can take advantage of even the smallest innovation that comes from companies trying to change things.
Instead most educators, and skeptics in other industries, focus on the 90+% of attempts that fail. Citing some story about Udacity failing would be similar to citing the failure of Friendster when claiming no social media company could ever be successful. Stopping people from thinking this way is one way education can solve this rampant skepticism of educational innovation.
More creative? I'd think it would lead to more groupthink.
Creativity is when someone goes off the beaten path and does something new a different.
I'm of the belief that there are no truly original ideas, just new combinations of old ideas. The more old ideas you know the more creative you can be. This is just an opinion though.
I also think group think is more of a problem among the uneducated. I doubt making knowledge more available will increase group think, although I agree it will certainly not get rid of it either.
they are quite literally incapable of normal conversation without involving the smartphone because it has become a part of their thought processes.
At some point Ray Kurzweil's vision of a connected brain will be a reality, and we will literally be able to use external computation in our regular thought patterns. Information retrieval is only the beginning; soon* these devices will help us be more creative by loaning us extra neurons when we need them.
* By soon I mean probably within a few decades
I don't buy the idea that imprecise buzzwords are the root of this problem. It seems an overall lack of understanding of new teaching methods is the problem.
The first half of the article talks about how people don't know what these buzzwords mean. But the second half doesn't even mention buzzwords again. It talks about a societal gap between current educators and education innovators. This is a problem I can agree is slowing adoption.
Within 20 years we will probably have contact lenses or even retinal implants that allow us to interact with technology at any time and without anyone noticing. Learning to deal with people looking at their cell phones during conversation is a good way to help transition society to a time when you can't assume 100% of someone's attention just because they are standing next to you.
Now the loud cell phone behavior is just being a jerk though.
Fair market pricing implies that the more money you have, the more important you are and is best used for resources that are perceived as a luxury. Of course this can be argued about all day, but it's not shocking that some people would find fair-market pricing to be inherently unfair.
They find it unfair because they spend too much time focusing on the minuscule number of people who have so much money that market prices don't affect them. Yes there are some people who have so much money that a $100 cab ride is the same as a $10 cab ride. Lets call them the 1%. But the vast majority of people, lets call them the 99%, will alter behavior based on pricing. I don't want to go into the math in too much detail, but there are far more people in the 99% than in the 1%.
I am a member of the top 5%, and I still budget my money. I still usually buy fruit based on what is in season, and plan my weekly meals based on what is on sale at the supermarket. And I would also think twice about using Uber for a frivolous trip if surge pricing has made it more expensive than normal, thus freeing up drivers for those who need them more.
Now when he starts screaming about capital gains being taxed higher, then I'll start listening to him.
This is precisely what he has been screaming about. Here is the first article you will find if you google for "warren buffett capital gains tax":
A Minimum Tax for the Wealthy. It was written by Warren Buffett in 2012. When he talks the decades when our capital gains taxes were almost double what they are now, he says "Never did anyone mention taxes as a reason to forgo an investment opportunity that I offered.
He does want excessive incomes derived from capital gains to be taxed higher, so are you listening now?
Bootstrapping a startup is a common way to start down the entrepreneurial path. And I doubt it is uncommon for these founders to spend no time during their 9-5 working on their new company. This may be as obvious as coding or answering tech support emails at work, or as subtle as reading articles on LinkedIn about angel investing.
I would love to know how old you are. Betting early 30's at best. You sound like naive yet think you have a world of knowledge.
I specifically said I was 35 in my post. Did you read the whole thing? I also stated how my opinions have been based on experiences from past coworkers in both their 30's and 40's. I don't know anyone in their 50's+ who has been laid off, although I have probably only worked with at most a dozen IT workers in that age bracket (not counting upper management types). Considering the IT industry as we know it has only been around about 25 years, it would be odd for there to be too many 50+ year old workers even without age discrimination.
If you are in your 30's or early 40's and get fired, why the F would somebody hire you unless they are truly desperate?
Because you want someone who knows what they are doing. The few people I know in their early to mid 20's are the ones finding it hard to break into the tech industry; at least in the Midwest that is. In a more startup friendly culture like the valley I assume it would be very different. Based on the 20-30 yr old coworkers I have had in the last few years, I have no fear of being able to convince a potential employer I am more valuable than they are. At least until they too get 10 years of experience.
Being laid off because the company has major layoffs or ceases to exist is one thing - fired for cause is another.
I have never known a quality IT worker that was fired for cause. It is so damn hard to find quality IT workers that employers will deal with a lot of shit before canning them.
For those over 45, many leave the industry after 6 months when they can't find work because it's been offshored or preference is given to a fresh grad at 1/2 the salary and where the cost of benefits is significantly less than that of an older "at risk" person.
Quality employers don't care that much about the higher salaries of the senior and director level IT staff they employ. Because good IT workers are the ones who make their bosses look great, and facilitate them getting their big bonuses. When a project is being run like shit and is about to miss a milestone that will reflect badly on our CTO, he wants someone like me who can simply get things done. Then when bonus time comes around he is glad to give me a quarter of a junior dev's salary just in bonus. In fact the only thing on his mind is making sure he doesn't lose me for the next time shit hits the fan (and I am not some special snowflake, there are other quality senior IT resources out there, although they are rare).
Finding a job in your 30's and even to mid-40's is relatively easy. You are, typically, at a point in your life where you can afford to move, live a little more carefree lifestyle and, perhaps, might just be starting a family...perhaps, you have bought your first "starter" house. It isn't so easy after 45 and damn near impossible, as a "tech" worker after 50 when your kids are growing up, entering college or trying to truly prepare for retirement.
Not sure how late you started your family, but most IT workers in their mid-40's already have a kid in high school. I am paying for daycare now, and at $1700 per month per kid it is just as expensive as college (and without 18 years to save up for it). So I can't wait until my kids are in college so their college funds can pay for it instead of my paychecks. With a large home in a great school district, two kids in daycare, college loans I'm still paying, and a wife who buys all her athletic gear at lululemon, I am well aware of how much my family needs our $200k+ household income.
People who are still in their early careers don't realize how vulnerable they become when they get older. People like you are truly part of the problem. My suggestion, plan for the future ... from someone who thought like you and now
Please, spare me the fairy tale that "if you have the skills, there's work for yoy," when you are unemployed in tech, you are damaged goods -"if he was any good, he'd have a job." (Kids, always have another job queued up.)
Please spare me the fairy tale that "even if you have the skills, its hard to find jobs in tech." I know four highly skilled IT workers in their 30's and 40's that have been fired or laid off in the last couple of years. Every one of them found work within a month. I know two mediocre IT workers in their 30's who were fired or laid off in the last few years, and one found work in a couple months (with a promotion to senior dev) and the other took four months. I do know a handful of tech workers who no longer work in tech because they couldn't find work, but they were never someone I would hire based on their ability.
And I live in the Midwest, not some west coast IT paradise. The simple fact is we are currently in a sellers market, and if you are good you can set your own rates. I was unsatisfied with the projects I was being given about 6 months ago, and got my acceptance letter from a new company within 3 weeks from the start of my job search. With about a 20% raise. Although I am only 35, so I guess according to you its all downhill from here.
Without changes to diet or doing any exercise I think your options are pretty much limited to violating the laws of thermodynamics.
Well that is pretty silly. Different people can have very different base metabolism rates. There is plenty of science to figure out when it comes to why two people can have the same weight, body composition, diet, and exercise levels and lose/gain different amounts of fat. And the differences can be very extreme between two people.
At some point we will almost certainly figure out how to give anyone the same metabolism as the best metabolism human genetics has given us an example of so far. And probably even better. Maybe this takes 200 years, maybe it takes 5, but it will happen. And plenty of people will lose dozens of pounds with no effort at all by using this technology.
Considering they are only paying $1 per license on average each year, framing the problem with a license per employee count is very misleading. The article should have focused on them spending $200 yearly on licenses per staff member. Or under $17 per month per staff member. Doesn't sound nearly as bad in this context, but then again the true point of the article was to get page views. This shows why I'm not in marketing.
I doubt it - a year of p/maternity leave is actually a legal requirement in places like Canada. Finding a way to fire someone after returning would get a company into very hot water very quickly. However, depending on your company, you do not get your full salary for the year and it drops after some number of months to the statutory p/maternity leave pay. I took a week off when our kids were born without any issues.
This is a different type of workplace than your average office. For women in high powered careers, it can be hard on their career to even take the more standard 3-5 months off. Their projects aren't going to wait for them to get back, and it can be hard to transition back into those projects when someone else has owned them for months. For people who take care of their career, their job isn't just about a paycheck. The most important part of their job is their list of achievements which can get them to the next level of their career. They may keep their salary and title regardless of how long their maternity leave is, but their potential to move up in their career after an extended absence is still diminished.
Infants still require far more attention from parents than toddlers do. Unless you have a unicorn baby, their sleep schedule for the first 3-6 months will be very sporadic which will restrict the parents' sleep. This sleep interruption is the primary difficult aspect of being a new parent. I recently saw a survey which asked what parents missed most about their pre-child life, and obviously it said not to say "sleep" since they didn't want the results to be unanimous.
Infants also require more attention since they are less able to self soothe and keep themselves entertained. They cannot be unsupervised unless asleep. If a two year old is given the same level of parental attention that an infant requires, the toddler would never break anything. They simply would never be left alone long enough to break anything.
My one year old may be running around now and causing havoc, but she is still far easier to handle now that she can actually play with her toys for 15 minutes in a row without needing me or my wife.
If its a year per kid, I'd be tempted to keep having kids. If that catches on, we might wonder if Netflix is encouraging rapid population growth.
The factor that allows Netflix (and more recently Microsoft) to offer these kinds of benefits is their constant push to only hire and retain top talent. If Netflix felt their employees were more average, they may fear abuse. But these are employees who have spent their adult life attaining the highest level of achievement and are unlikely to let this slip away. I read one article recently that wondered how many Netflix employees would actually take more than the standard three months off (standard among professionals, not the entire population). The more time away from their job the more chance their department starts moving on without them.
Also notice that Netflix employees in distribution centers don't get this benefit. Only their most valuable and skilled employees qualify.
Your situation is very uncommon. You have a very contrived example where you live in a remote area with no competition, and where recent forest fires have shown it is not very cost effective for humans to live there at all. Your insurance company may be taking advantage of you, or they could simply be realizing how costly it will be to pay out claims during the next forest fire. If the only competition in your town is charging around $5000 per year for a $100k house (estimated based on the numbers you gave), there would plenty of insurance companies fighting to undercut them unless there is good reason the rates are so high.
Like the summary says, nuclear weapons require expensive and hard to obtain raw materials and a significant amount of technology not common in the civilian space. This is the only reason, IMHO, that nuclear proliferation treaties work as well as they do. How does this group expect governments to keep a lid on military tech that relies on ubiquitous technology found throughout the civilian economy?
Computer Science is a vocationally oriented topic.
Language, Arts, History, Math, and Basic Science are all core topics.
As such CS is not a necessary part of the foundation, but a facet to come later for those who want/need it.
But everyone needs the foundation.
There was a time when learning to read was not a core subject for children. Learning to fix their own clothes and grow food was more important. And I doubt many people thought algebra should be a core subject 100 years ago. Times change and so do core educational topics.
Like it or not there is at least a good argument for the general population having a deeper understanding of computing in the coming decades. Knowing how to understand a data model and manipulate data, understanding web technologies, knowing how to write simple scripts, etc. may be more necessary than knowing long division for a large percentage of the population 20 years from now. And that is the workplace we are teaching current students to be a part of.
In my child's middle school they also teach Environmental Science, humanitarianism, HIV/Aids Prevention and various other politically motivated subjects as core curriculum, such that kids are not able to take enriching classes such as music or art.
I seriously doubt your child's school has a year long or even semester long course whose sole purpose is teaching HIV/Aids prevention. Perhaps they have a health class which covers sexually transmitted diseases for a couple weeks, but that is not the same thing as core curriculum.
And it is very sad that someone would think teaching children about the environment and humanitarianism is only part of a political agenda, instead of being important topics for any school. I am glad your children are getting another viewpoint other than just what they are hearing at home.
Arts and foreign language are probably more important than computer science at the K-12 level.
While I'm not saying you are wrong, but that is very arguable. I for instance think computer science is far more important than foreign language at any grade level. I computer science is less important than art for K-5, but more important than art after that. These are just my opinions, and I'm sure plenty of people and even researchers have different opinions in this discussion.
If you want to include computer science without deleting existing core subjects, it will cost more money and class time. Are you willing to pay more in taxes to support schools? Are you willing to extend the class day and academic year so there is time to teach all these subjects? I am willing to accept those changes but to add comp sci without those changes will be destructive.
Although I am a bad person to ask here, because I am very willing to pay more in taxes to support more schooling. Both longer days and longer school years. I happen to live in an area where our taxes provide over $20k per student to our primary and secondary schools, and once my kids are at school ages (11 months and -7 months now) they will likely have access to academic rigorous summer programs (which I'm happy to pay for).
Based on the total number of core classes now, I doubt including computer science would add more than 5% of coursework over a year. That comes to less than $100 in extra taxes per year per citizen.
From what I have been able to find, the set of core academic subjects is already much larger than you think. It isn't just English, Math, Science, History. From an archived No Child Left Behind FAQ I found (source), here is a list of current core academic subjects (it may have changed since this documents first publishing):
English, reading or language arts, math, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, arts, history and geography
I see no reason why computer science (at a primary/secondary school level) shouldn't be at least equally important as foreign languages, arts, and geography.
As a hiring manager, I'm given a number and that's what I get to hire someone with. If someone asks for more, I can usually try to accommodate, but if you want 100K and I can only give you 80K, then it comes down to whether you want the job or not.
The thing is, you as the hiring manager are not really the problem. You really have been given instructions and limitations by your bosses and probably don't have the authority to ignore them. People complain about their boss not paying them enough because that is their primary liaison with the executives. But many times it is those executives who shoulder more of the responsibility for uneven pay.
That said, your comments don't change anything regarding whether or not employees are getting short changed. You may have your hands tied, but someone in your organization doesn't. Prices can be altered, outside funding can be acquired, executive and managerial pay can be adjusted, commission structures can be adjusted, lower quality employees can be let go, etc. Or your boss can simply give you a budget of $80k for a new hire regardless of how much it really costs for a quality applicant.
What I don't think is that you should consider what someone else makes to be a reflection on what the company thinks of *you*. If you're capable, you may start lower, but I'd probably be happy to see you become a manager or advanced individual contributor where that other guy will never get higher than he is today. You'll start at 80K, but you'll someday get to 150K whereas the other guy will never see the other side of 110. Alternately, you could be selected for more training opportunities or given more interesting work. All of that turns into more money too, either at that work place or at another place you move to later.
This I completely agree with. It generally only applies to people with no other options though. Someone with options will just take a job with someone else who is paying $100k. If there is no other person willing to pay that, then this employee really is only worth $80k. At least as a new hire that is. Plenty of people are horrible interviewees or horrible negotiators and generally start at a lower salary because of it. These employees must rely on proving themselves and getting promotions.