Aren't you curious as to why? I am because I've noticed a definite fall off in the number of women in the field. I don't think that the women of 25 years ago are fundamentally different than the women of today. So what gives?
At least part of it must be that women are reluctant to enter a field where there are so few other women. Some won't care, obviously, but others will.
I've been doing this for about 25 years now and there used to be more women in the field. I'm not exactly sure what happened. As to Dr. AnnMaria De Mars's point, what about the ones that graduated 10 years ago? I'm guessing a lot of them moved on to different jobs, either in management or someplace else. Compounding the problem women face is ageism. I think it's pretty well accepted that older programmers have a more difficult time finding work in a field that demands constant retraining.
In addition, how many companies would be interested in a programmer that took a few years off to stay home with their kids and didn't have time to maintain their skills? Men don't have that problem to the same degree.
I'm in a position now where I'm involved in hiring new developers. We've always had far fewer women candidates then men. The last time around we had zero.
That doesn't mean it wouldn't have been easier/faster for most people on a bike equipped with drop bars. I'm purposely not calling them racing bikes because not all drop bar bikes are racing bikes.
From what I understand in places where transportation cycling is very popular in Europe, trips are typically under 5km, terrain is fairly flat, and speeds are relatively slow, so light weight and aerodynamics don't matter that much. Upright bikes make perfect sense.
For the record, I don't really care if a e-bike has drop bars or not.
Not every bike that has drop bars is a racing bike but that is a common misconception. Drop bars are also very common on touring bikes which are typically used for carrying loads and riding longer distances. They will not have the bars set nearly as low relative to the saddle as a racing bike would.
Drop bars are nice, - not only for the more aerodynamic option of riding in the drops but for the other hand positions they give you. This is why many people like them. It is really about comfort believe it or not.
If people prefer an upright bike it is no skin off my nose. We are all different.
Well, it does support HTML Media Capture so you can grab pictures off the camera but I'm not really disagreeing with you. I think you're just helping make my point. Inconsistent support of features has always been a problem with web browsers.
What the author seems to be railing against is that with native mobile apps we've somehow lost the "write once, run anywhere" utopia we once enjoyed. That fact is that we never had that.
I was talking about specific ways that web apps are limited in terms of functionality they can deliver on a mobile platform. Still, you'd probably be surprised at the number of popular native apps that make significant use of web technology.
Anyway, I'm not trying to convince anyone that a web app is just as good as a native app, only that web apps have inherent limitations that make native apps the only reasonable choice in many cases.
Well, yes that's sort of a fundamental problem with web apps isn't it? - Lack of compatibility and standards compliance amongst browsers. This was the case prior to the explosion of mobile apps and it still exists today.
Which most people will not bother to pay for. Like it or not, people think of nothing of paying a few dollars for a mobile app but feel web content should be free.
and people were ripping on them for that, demanding that they open the platform up for native apps. Which of course they did.
You have to understand that from a user perspective a native app is often preferred to a web app. Within a web app, access to hardware features is limited and so is storage of local data. However there are ways to leverage web development knowledge and skills when creating native apps for mobile devices.
Does the current situation complicate things for people who want to deploy applications on different mobile devices? Yes and No. Nothing is stopping you from creating a web app.
There are lots of things to consider beyond just pay. How stable is the new company? What are the long term prospects of both companies and your positions? What is best for your career? Health Benefits? Even something as seemingly unimportant as whether or it significantly lengthens or shortens your commute can matter.
I left in both cases and went to jobs that ultimately didn't work out but they both opened doors to other opportunities I wouldn't have otherwise had.
One thing I do recommend is that if you do leave, give your current company ample notice and offer your future time (for a fee) to help them through any transition. By not burning bridges you may allow yourself the opportunity to come back if the new job isn't what you had hoped.
Another option would be to talk to your current supervisor (or theirs) to see if there is something that could be done to get you on a more rewarding path in your current job.
This idea of having workers living and working near the center of a city sounds all well and good from an efficiency perspective, but in reality it never seems to work out, at least in America. Either the downtown is a run-down dump like Detroit where it's extremely dangerous and there's a lot of crime and poverty, or it's "gentrified" like NYC and the cost of living is absolutely astronomical and unaffordable for anyone but the executives of these corporations (which is, of course, why companies like MTA exist, to move people between affordable areas where the live and the unaffordable areas where their jobs are)....
There are lots of cities where downtown is neither a run down dump or super expensive to live in. I'm not sure I agree that Google Buses are bad but as somebody whose moved from a suburb to a city, I find some of the people posting here are pretty far off base when it comes to describing what living in a city is like.
Most importantly they are not homogeneous places and on the whole much safer than people often realize. City neighborhoods can be very much like small towns. I know most of the people that live on our block and the block behind our alley. Local business owners recognize me. I'm not afraid to let my son ride his bike to school. Kids play kick the can in our alley. We have a mix of people in our neighborhood. Some more affluent professionals. Some teachers, and some blue collar folks.
The other thing is that you don't need a car to go everywhere. I ride my bike to work. I can walk to grocery stores, restaurants and hardware stores. There's a park and a beach 4 blocks away. In this city you are never farther than 6 blocks from a park.
I think you lost credibility when you said that Ubuntu could have taken the desktop. No linux distribution has ever even been close. Outside of a significant subset of power users, it doesn't have a lot of fans. This is for a lot of reasons that aren't going to go away any time soon.
Oh and just curious. Have you spent much time working with linux and/or open source development tools? Visual Studio is very slick and refined but there's an astonishing amount of things in the open source world to aid a software developer. So much so that I'd never long for Windows on a BBB.
Things like the RPi and the BBB bode well for the future of Linux and other free or mostly free OSes. Personally I would much rather see kids learning about computers on hardware running an OS that can be studied, picked apart, and modified as desired.
I say this as somebody whose main computer runs OS/X which is a closed (or at least semi-closed) system. I'm quite content not to have it on a BBB.
Microsoft wouldn't have to use the same multiplier as Starbucks.
FWIW Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream used to have the policy that the highest paid employee's wages couldn't exceed 5 times the wages of the lowest paid worker. This policy ended in the mid 90's when one of the original CEOs stepped down and they wanted to hire another.
They still boast that every worker is paid a livable wage.
The problem is that if a good candidate for CEO can get paid significantly more elsewhere, you're going to have a difficult time hiring them unless there's something about you company that makes them rather work there.
Same thing with sports. If one team is offering you a 10 million more than another, where are you going to go? In sports it's pretty easy to track the performance of individual athletes. To me its much harder to gauge the performance of the CEO. If a company is performing well, does that necessarily mean that they have an excellent CEO?
In the long run these increasingly high salaries relative to other workers is unsustainable, - both for athletes and for CEOs. Ultimately their salaries comes from the rest of us. If we can't afford to go to football games, or even pay for cable, eventually the revenue stream for sports dries up.
We qualify as small to medium business and we had an audit of our IT systems done last year by a subcontractor of the firm that audits our books (As part of our business we offer financing).
Their recommendation was that to qualify as "offsite", the backups should be kept at least 7 miles away. The reason being that a natural (or manmade) disaster that would destroy or render inaccessible our primary backups could also do the same to our offsite backups if they were kept in the same general area.
Remember that these are rumors. The Tesla thing would be a reach for Apple but there some interesting parallels between the two companies. Electronics and computers are increasingly central to the operation of modern vehicles.
Anyway, I'm talking more about the medical device rumor. And my guess is that they aren't initially going to be medical devices in the traditional sense. They'll be fitness/wellness enhancing devices along the lines of what Fitbit/Polar and to a certain extent Garmin produce.
I have no idea this is what Apple is really doing or not but branching into other industries makes complete sense IF you can provide something that's not already being provided.
The mp3 player was not an industry that Apple was involved in but they saw a way that they could leverage their expertise and connections to provide a better user experience than the existing companies in that market did.
Same with the iPhone. Are you suggesting that it was foolish for Apple to go into those markets?
The brick and mortar Apple Stores were also something that industry experts were skeptical that Apple could pull off given the failure of other attempts computer manufactures had with their own retail stores. But it's been a huge success.
My point is that they have a decent track record in doing this sort of thing and I think they correctly realize that the smartphone market is maturing to the point that it's going to be much harder to differentiate themselves there.
I'm an introvert so I understand how socializing can be tiring. Extroverts can have a hard time getting that. That doesn't mean that I don't enjoy it, but like a nice bike ride, or playing a sport, it can be fun and tiring all at the same time. Eventually I need to rest, which means some time to myself.
The ski weekend is a perfect example. Unless I can sneak off on my own once in awhile, a weekend in close quarters with a bunch of other people is about all I can handle.
I used to see socializing as either something you enjoyed and were good at or you weren't. Now I look it more like a skill that I can better at if I choose to work on it. As I'm getting older I'm also recognizing the important role that socializing plays in our careers and other aspects of our lives. I'll give you a concrete example. The reclusive guy I mentioned in the post above is also probably the least productive software developer on staff. He does very good work, he's just very particular and not a fast starter. In a high level meeting I was at a few weeks ago, there were questions on whether he should be let go or not. Certainly his productivity is an issue, but I can guarantee that if the guy weren't such an enigma and was more a part of the social fabric of the company, that question would not have been asked. Further, I think if he were to socialize a little more with the other developers, he'd get up to speed on things much quicker than he does. As it stands he's risking becoming a 50 year old IT guy looking for a job.
There are lessons there for all of us I think. Myself included.
Of course instinct plays a huge role in mating. But couples can and do decide to have no kids even though they are mating. Other couples may have one or two, then stop even though they continue mating and could have more kids if they wanted.
There is something between instinct and critical thinking which also drives a lot of our behavior and that is called "culture". You personally may decide through critical thinking that marriage in and of itself has no value. However, the current culture places a lot of value in marriage (though that may be changing).
Anyone can choose to deviate from cultural norms if they wish. They may be happier for doing so but many times there is a price to pay for going down that road. Anyone who doesn't see that isn't really applying critical thinking. They are choosing to ignore what might be very important factors. They are sticking their head in the sand.
So I will state it this way. Marriage is important because the culture says it is. Ask anyone over 50 who has never been married. They might be happy with that choice, but I'm sure that at times it's been difficult because the cultural norm is for people to get married.
Look at it another way: Ask any gay couple in a state that doesn't allow gay marriage whether marriage is important or not. You will quickly find out that it's more than just a title. There are practical ramifications for remaining unmarried.
For some people it's just a title, for others it's a major rite of passage.
The latter type of person is what I would call an "idiot." Frankly, you don't want to be involved with magical thinkers to begin with.
Rites of passage are part of the culture and not necessarily religious if that's what you're referring to by "magical thinking". Marriage can be a religious arrangement or not.
So there is a bit more incentive to try and work things out.
If they're unhappy enough to consider divorce as an option, they'll just be unhappy. If they can make up, they would do that anyway.
Not necessarily. I've met people who've considered divorce, decided to stick together and ended up being quite happy. At least one of those couples would have split had they not been married.
Also with marriage often comes children and even more entanglement.
Children have little to do with marriage, but with basic reproductive urges.
Certainly you can have children without marriage but if you think they are strictly the result of reproductive urges then your life experience must be fairly limited in that regard. There is such a thing as birth control and adoption. For many, having children is a conscious choice.
Though there are practical aspects to relationships, they are all about emotions. Logical or not, going through the process of getting married in front of friends and family is important to some people. What matters is that they are successful at finding happiness and whether you'd consider them an idiot or not for their "magical thinking" is irrelevant.
For some people it's just a title, for others it's a major rite of passage. It doesn't fix a bad relationship but if marriage is important to one person in a relationship and it's apparent that the relationship is not headed down that path, the relationship is likely to end.
Now, I don't know if that's what happened to this guy's cousin or not but it's possible he had a very good relationship with one of those girlfriends but she bailed because she wanted to get married and he didn't. Maybe he's better off. Maybe not.
I also agree that it won't keep people together but it does lead to further entanglement into one another's lives. Splitting requires dealing with legalities and separation of assets. Sometimes that's easy. Often times not. So there is a bit more incentive to try and work things out. Also with marriage often comes children and even more entanglement. The mistake many people make when getting a divorce is thinking they'll no longer have to deal with their spouse. If they have kids they're in for a huge surprise. Dealing with that ex is going to be part of their lives for the foreseeable future, divorced or not.
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So companies conspired to get more women in the workforce to drive down labor costs?
Aren't you curious as to why? I am because I've noticed a definite fall off in the number of women in the field. I don't think that the women of 25 years ago are fundamentally different than the women of today. So what gives?
At least part of it must be that women are reluctant to enter a field where there are so few other women. Some won't care, obviously, but others will.
I've been doing this for about 25 years now and there used to be more women in the field. I'm not exactly sure what happened. As to Dr. AnnMaria De Mars's point, what about the ones that graduated 10 years ago? I'm guessing a lot of them moved on to different jobs, either in management or someplace else. Compounding the problem women face is ageism. I think it's pretty well accepted that older programmers have a more difficult time finding work in a field that demands constant retraining.
In addition, how many companies would be interested in a programmer that took a few years off to stay home with their kids and didn't have time to maintain their skills? Men don't have that problem to the same degree.
I'm in a position now where I'm involved in hiring new developers. We've always had far fewer women candidates then men. The last time around we had zero.
That doesn't mean it wouldn't have been easier/faster for most people on a bike equipped with drop bars. I'm purposely not calling them racing bikes because not all drop bar bikes are racing bikes.
From what I understand in places where transportation cycling is very popular in Europe, trips are typically under 5km, terrain is fairly flat, and speeds are relatively slow, so light weight and aerodynamics don't matter that much. Upright bikes make perfect sense.
For the record, I don't really care if a e-bike has drop bars or not.
Not every bike that has drop bars is a racing bike but that is a common misconception. Drop bars are also very common on touring bikes which are typically used for carrying loads and riding longer distances. They will not have the bars set nearly as low relative to the saddle as a racing bike would.
Drop bars are nice, - not only for the more aerodynamic option of riding in the drops but for the other hand positions they give you. This is why many people like them. It is really about comfort believe it or not.
If people prefer an upright bike it is no skin off my nose. We are all different.
Actually, for riding on the streets, a typical bike suspension is completely unnecessary and just uses more energy.
Well, it does support HTML Media Capture so you can grab pictures off the camera but I'm not really disagreeing with you. I think you're just helping make my point. Inconsistent support of features has always been a problem with web browsers.
What the author seems to be railing against is that with native mobile apps we've somehow lost the "write once, run anywhere" utopia we once enjoyed. That fact is that we never had that.
I was talking about specific ways that web apps are limited in terms of functionality they can deliver on a mobile platform. Still, you'd probably be surprised at the number of popular native apps that make significant use of web technology.
Anyway, I'm not trying to convince anyone that a web app is just as good as a native app, only that web apps have inherent limitations that make native apps the only reasonable choice in many cases.
Well, yes that's sort of a fundamental problem with web apps isn't it? - Lack of compatibility and standards compliance amongst browsers. This was the case prior to the explosion of mobile apps and it still exists today.
Which most people will not bother to pay for. Like it or not, people think of nothing of paying a few dollars for a mobile app but feel web content should be free.
and people were ripping on them for that, demanding that they open the platform up for native apps. Which of course they did.
You have to understand that from a user perspective a native app is often preferred to a web app. Within a web app, access to hardware features is limited and so is storage of local data. However there are ways to leverage web development knowledge and skills when creating native apps for mobile devices.
Does the current situation complicate things for people who want to deploy applications on different mobile devices? Yes and No. Nothing is stopping you from creating a web app.
There are lots of things to consider beyond just pay. How stable is the new company? What are the long term prospects of both companies and your positions? What is best for your career? Health Benefits? Even something as seemingly unimportant as whether or it significantly lengthens or shortens your commute can matter.
I left in both cases and went to jobs that ultimately didn't work out but they both opened doors to other opportunities I wouldn't have otherwise had.
One thing I do recommend is that if you do leave, give your current company ample notice and offer your future time (for a fee) to help them through any transition. By not burning bridges you may allow yourself the opportunity to come back if the new job isn't what you had hoped.
Another option would be to talk to your current supervisor (or theirs) to see if there is something that could be done to get you on a more rewarding path in your current job.
...
This idea of having workers living and working near the center of a city sounds all well and good from an efficiency perspective, but in reality it never seems to work out, at least in America. Either the downtown is a run-down dump like Detroit where it's extremely dangerous and there's a lot of crime and poverty, or it's "gentrified" like NYC and the cost of living is absolutely astronomical and unaffordable for anyone but the executives of these corporations (which is, of course, why companies like MTA exist, to move people between affordable areas where the live and the unaffordable areas where their jobs are). ...
There are lots of cities where downtown is neither a run down dump or super expensive to live in. I'm not sure I agree that Google Buses are bad but as somebody whose moved from a suburb to a city, I find some of the people posting here are pretty far off base when it comes to describing what living in a city is like.
Most importantly they are not homogeneous places and on the whole much safer than people often realize. City neighborhoods can be very much like small towns. I know most of the people that live on our block and the block behind our alley. Local business owners recognize me. I'm not afraid to let my son ride his bike to school. Kids play kick the can in our alley. We have a mix of people in our neighborhood. Some more affluent professionals. Some teachers, and some blue collar folks.
The other thing is that you don't need a car to go everywhere. I ride my bike to work. I can walk to grocery stores, restaurants and hardware stores. There's a park and a beach 4 blocks away. In this city you are never farther than 6 blocks from a park.
I think you lost credibility when you said that Ubuntu could have taken the desktop. No linux distribution has ever even been close. Outside of a significant subset of power users, it doesn't have a lot of fans. This is for a lot of reasons that aren't going to go away any time soon.
Oh and just curious. Have you spent much time working with linux and/or open source development tools? Visual Studio is very slick and refined but there's an astonishing amount of things in the open source world to aid a software developer. So much so that I'd never long for Windows on a BBB.
Things like the RPi and the BBB bode well for the future of Linux and other free or mostly free OSes. Personally I would much rather see kids learning about computers on hardware running an OS that can be studied, picked apart, and modified as desired.
I say this as somebody whose main computer runs OS/X which is a closed (or at least semi-closed) system. I'm quite content not to have it on a BBB.
Microsoft wouldn't have to use the same multiplier as Starbucks.
FWIW Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream used to have the policy that the highest paid employee's wages couldn't exceed 5 times the wages of the lowest paid worker. This policy ended in the mid 90's when one of the original CEOs stepped down and they wanted to hire another. They still boast that every worker is paid a livable wage.
The problem is that if a good candidate for CEO can get paid significantly more elsewhere, you're going to have a difficult time hiring them unless there's something about you company that makes them rather work there.
Same thing with sports. If one team is offering you a 10 million more than another, where are you going to go? In sports it's pretty easy to track the performance of individual athletes. To me its much harder to gauge the performance of the CEO. If a company is performing well, does that necessarily mean that they have an excellent CEO?
In the long run these increasingly high salaries relative to other workers is unsustainable, - both for athletes and for CEOs. Ultimately their salaries comes from the rest of us. If we can't afford to go to football games, or even pay for cable, eventually the revenue stream for sports dries up.
We qualify as small to medium business and we had an audit of our IT systems done last year by a subcontractor of the firm that audits our books (As part of our business we offer financing).
Their recommendation was that to qualify as "offsite", the backups should be kept at least 7 miles away. The reason being that a natural (or manmade) disaster that would destroy or render inaccessible our primary backups could also do the same to our offsite backups if they were kept in the same general area.
Remember that these are rumors. The Tesla thing would be a reach for Apple but there some interesting parallels between the two companies. Electronics and computers are increasingly central to the operation of modern vehicles.
Anyway, I'm talking more about the medical device rumor. And my guess is that they aren't initially going to be medical devices in the traditional sense. They'll be fitness/wellness enhancing devices along the lines of what Fitbit/Polar and to a certain extent Garmin produce.
Who controls the firmware that's on your car today?
I have no idea this is what Apple is really doing or not but branching into other industries makes complete sense IF you can provide something that's not already being provided.
The mp3 player was not an industry that Apple was involved in but they saw a way that they could leverage their expertise and connections to provide a better user experience than the existing companies in that market did.
Same with the iPhone. Are you suggesting that it was foolish for Apple to go into those markets?
The brick and mortar Apple Stores were also something that industry experts were skeptical that Apple could pull off given the failure of other attempts computer manufactures had with their own retail stores. But it's been a huge success.
My point is that they have a decent track record in doing this sort of thing and I think they correctly realize that the smartphone market is maturing to the point that it's going to be much harder to differentiate themselves there.
I'm an introvert so I understand how socializing can be tiring. Extroverts can have a hard time getting that. That doesn't mean that I don't enjoy it, but like a nice bike ride, or playing a sport, it can be fun and tiring all at the same time. Eventually I need to rest, which means some time to myself.
The ski weekend is a perfect example. Unless I can sneak off on my own once in awhile, a weekend in close quarters with a bunch of other people is about all I can handle.
I used to see socializing as either something you enjoyed and were good at or you weren't. Now I look it more like a skill that I can better at if I choose to work on it. As I'm getting older I'm also recognizing the important role that socializing plays in our careers and other aspects of our lives. I'll give you a concrete example. The reclusive guy I mentioned in the post above is also probably the least productive software developer on staff. He does very good work, he's just very particular and not a fast starter. In a high level meeting I was at a few weeks ago, there were questions on whether he should be let go or not. Certainly his productivity is an issue, but I can guarantee that if the guy weren't such an enigma and was more a part of the social fabric of the company, that question would not have been asked. Further, I think if he were to socialize a little more with the other developers, he'd get up to speed on things much quicker than he does. As it stands he's risking becoming a 50 year old IT guy looking for a job.
There are lessons there for all of us I think. Myself included.
Of course instinct plays a huge role in mating. But couples can and do decide to have no kids even though they are mating. Other couples may have one or two, then stop even though they continue mating and could have more kids if they wanted.
There is something between instinct and critical thinking which also drives a lot of our behavior and that is called "culture". You personally may decide through critical thinking that marriage in and of itself has no value. However, the current culture places a lot of value in marriage (though that may be changing).
Anyone can choose to deviate from cultural norms if they wish. They may be happier for doing so but many times there is a price to pay for going down that road. Anyone who doesn't see that isn't really applying critical thinking. They are choosing to ignore what might be very important factors. They are sticking their head in the sand.
So I will state it this way. Marriage is important because the culture says it is. Ask anyone over 50 who has never been married. They might be happy with that choice, but I'm sure that at times it's been difficult because the cultural norm is for people to get married.
Look at it another way: Ask any gay couple in a state that doesn't allow gay marriage whether marriage is important or not. You will quickly find out that it's more than just a title. There are practical ramifications for remaining unmarried.
For some people it's just a title, for others it's a major rite of passage.
The latter type of person is what I would call an "idiot." Frankly, you don't want to be involved with magical thinkers to begin with.
Rites of passage are part of the culture and not necessarily religious if that's what you're referring to by "magical thinking". Marriage can be a religious arrangement or not.
So there is a bit more incentive to try and work things out.
If they're unhappy enough to consider divorce as an option, they'll just be unhappy. If they can make up, they would do that anyway.
Not necessarily. I've met people who've considered divorce, decided to stick together and ended up being quite happy. At least one of those couples would have split had they not been married.
Also with marriage often comes children and even more entanglement.
Children have little to do with marriage, but with basic reproductive urges.
Certainly you can have children without marriage but if you think they are strictly the result of reproductive urges then your life experience must be fairly limited in that regard. There is such a thing as birth control and adoption. For many, having children is a conscious choice.
Though there are practical aspects to relationships, they are all about emotions. Logical or not, going through the process of getting married in front of friends and family is important to some people. What matters is that they are successful at finding happiness and whether you'd consider them an idiot or not for their "magical thinking" is irrelevant.
For some people it's just a title, for others it's a major rite of passage. It doesn't fix a bad relationship but if marriage is important to one person in a relationship and it's apparent that the relationship is not headed down that path, the relationship is likely to end.
Now, I don't know if that's what happened to this guy's cousin or not but it's possible he had a very good relationship with one of those girlfriends but she bailed because she wanted to get married and he didn't. Maybe he's better off. Maybe not.
I also agree that it won't keep people together but it does lead to further entanglement into one another's lives. Splitting requires dealing with legalities and separation of assets. Sometimes that's easy. Often times not. So there is a bit more incentive to try and work things out. Also with marriage often comes children and even more entanglement. The mistake many people make when getting a divorce is thinking they'll no longer have to deal with their spouse. If they have kids they're in for a huge surprise. Dealing with that ex is going to be part of their lives for the foreseeable future, divorced or not.