The bizarre thing is it is now more difficult to pilot a drone than actually fly a manned ultralight with 5 gallons of gasoline on it weighing in the hundreds of pounds. You can just build one and fly it with no training and no registration. Just head on up into the sky. I know, I built one and flew it for quite a bit. Yet now my drone means I have to register with them, because obviously that drone is much more of a danger to the sky compared to my full sized ultralight.
Go figure. Gotta love the logic in government laws.
If it is for an annoying dog, just get one of the anti bark devices that look like a bird house first. There are several with good reviews on Amazon. They don't work on all dogs, but there often is success with them. It is worth a shot since they are only like 50 bucks, and soundproofing your home is going to cost a lot more.
Otherwise what I have found the most effective is outside vegetation around your property border. Gives you privacy from both sight and sound. Also pretty....
It is crazy how a song from quite awhile ago is still so relevant. Somehow it feels that we will foolishly repeat the same stupid pattern over and over again. Simply using some screwed up country for the bigger countries to fight battles, all in the name of the greater good. Seems like if we really cared about solving the problems in Syria we would all join together in a common agreed upon plan. I can't imagine any government standing up to the full force of the world united.
But instead, we are on the eve of destruction.....
The sad thing is that most programmers are still using simple string concatenation to write their SQL programmatically. In this modern day, that is beyond silly. If you use a DSL like jooq, you get several advantages. First off, all strings will automatically be bounded and avoid the simple injection tactics that most people use. Second, you can change databases on a whim by just changing the dialect. This is great for testing and using in memory databases for unit tests. If people just took that simple step, very few attacks would remain, and they would probably be much happier programmers with far fewer bugs!
Actually, it is about having fun flying as well. Modern Phantom 3 devices can be flown FPV (First Person View), which opens up a whole new world compared to the old RC planes where you can only fly short distances. If flown safely in safe areas, there is little risk that these drones can cause. If any plane if flying below 400 feet over anywhere, they sure as heck better be extra cautious anyways, as there are all kinds of hazards there, of which the random drone is the least of their problems.
Also, there are people like me who use them more for the photographic and video opportunities. Not spying on people like some pervert. That is like saying we should register cameras cause some sickos use them to take spy pictures in bathrooms. That is the vast minority. Do you want to know what most of us do? Here is a great example and explain to me how I could ever catch this scenery any other way: Drone Flight in Utah Desert
It is just like any hobby. There will be people who abuse it, and the vast majority of people who are just having fun. I am not that paranoid about people spying on me with drones to ban the entire hobby. The real point is registration will do nothing to stop it. People like myself already put their phone numbers on their planes so if lost, there is a chance they will come back to me. The people who are the problems will not do anything. More tax dollars to a solution to nothing.
Nothing happened. No hijackings, no downed planes, absolutely nothing. Maybe we don't need all of this security theater after all and could just leave our shoes on and take some water with us through the gate then? Save a few tax dollars?
Of course it will go the other way and will be a huge call for more strict rules and procedures. Sigh.....
I was at a 'hot' company a little over a year ago. They literally had the who's who of silicon valley and the east coast investing in them. I figured it was a great opportunity to be involved with at the time. Then I was sitting in a company wide meeting (kind of a pep rally that happened every week) and the head guy gets up and says exactly this:
"Look around you. Notice you don't see very much grey hair? That's on purpose. We want people on they way up, not their way out!"
I was shocked that they would be so blatant about it. Not even a hesitation in a corporate wide meeting of 500 people and recorded to boot. If I didn't care about torpedoing my own career, I would have filed a suit that day, being 44 at the time. Funny thing was their code was some of the worst I have ever seen and was having to re-write large portions of it do to the horrible architecture and coding patterns in place. Literally in just a few months I had re-written what was not working for their largest clients and had it running in a fraction of the time. The desperately needed people with experience.
Once I heard that I put my resume out to a couple of people, had a job offer within two weeks, and am making 50% more than I was there anyways with rapid promotion within a few months, and been at my current job exactly a year now. So in the long run, their loss. But I can tell you it is in fact real and blatant out there.
That said as a programmer if you keep your skills up, there are still plenty of jobs out there. It's just a bit more work than it should be to find a good one.
Umm, longer hours does not mean anything when it comes to actual output. It is one of the biggest fallacies of the software industry. I am one of the older programmers, being over 40, where I work. I work with kids straight out of college. First off, half the time they are goofing off playing ping pong, pool, or board games. The other half, they are throwing code together that kind of works but will never be maintainable. They could spend 80 hours a week doing that and we would be further behind in the long run.
The older coders may only put in the 9 or 10 hours a day. But you know what, we get to work, get it done, and it works right the first time. We have tests, proper coding and documentation. I am also not looking for my company to entertain me and provide all kinds of crazy things just to keep me happy. More importantly, if the company is treating me fairly, I am not going to jump in one or two years because 'I am bored and need a new challenge' like the cheap hires.
Now I know these are generalizations, like everything else, but sometimes you get what you pay for. Hire one guy with real experience across the board earned from the hard knocks of actually having been there, and he is probably worth several (if not more) of the 'cheap' under 30's who really just haven't had the experience yet of what mistakes cost. Pair them together, and you probably have the best of both worlds.
So google employees only are expected to work 40 hours? I am calling BS on that one for sure, or are they not one of the Big 5? Also, if you require all of your employees to move to Silicon Valley for their job, aren't you kind of limiting your pool right there? I am not moving from where I am to some place where a condo costs more than my house in the mountains with a yard and such.
If these companies were truly so desperate for quality programmers, they would try some new techniques to attract talent. I would consider working for any of them if they allowed working from home primarily as an option, so I could live in a more affordable area. Also, stop the weird interview techniques that have absolutely nothing to do with programming. I am a programmer, and do not particularly care for an interview with a bunch of riddles. Ask me to create you a software program in pseudo code, and you will see what I bring to the table. Making me jump through silly hoops is demeaning, and not productive (as they have determined themselves). Also, don't low ball me on pay. If there is such a huge shortage of workers, why haven't top end programmer's salaries become equivalent to doctor's salaries?
Instead what we have seen is that low end salaries have increased quite a bit as they basically want indentured servants who spend ridiculous hours churning out ill informed code. I sometimes am scared for this industry as I watch the quality around me rapidly decline.
I share your pain here. I absolutely hate open office plans, as it is very hard to concentrate on true difficult problems. Never mind the complete lack of personal space as you are typically on a 'bench' type environment. The worst trend in programming I have ever seen.
That said, I don't think it is actually done to encourage collaboration. The corporate world has just convinced people of that. Even all of the obvious extroverts in my office immediately slap headphones on and isolate themselves anyways. I have yet to see this environment in any example encourage people to work together. I think the corporations just love the cost savings in that your personal space is now down to almost nothing and the furniture is crappy desks with crappy chairs that are 'modern'. They just sell the cheapness as 'encourages collaboration'.... I figure soon enough it will be two to a desk at all times for 'pair programming' to ensure the final nail in the coffin for me as a programmer....
Except how is student government for 'smart kids'? I've never heard of government being full of smart people before....
Seriously, though, almost all of that stuff was for the popular kids, not the truly smart ones. My school growing up was horrible for this, but once a year they would throw us a bone. There would be a Saturday that was at a college campus and was for truly smart individuals. We all got to go and pick 'courses' to attend, given by college professors, on all kinds of cool topics for a kid in elementary school. We all got to hang out together, and be friends in an introverted way. It was great. Then it was back to the quagmire and ignoring in public school for the rest of the year. Man, I do not miss that at all. Then I went to an engineering school and everything was so much better.
I just had a friend who had their house broken into, and the person who bought their laptop actually contacted them after realizing it was stolen. They had bought it at a gas station from a guy 'selling his stuff to get gas money'. Yeah, the guy should have realized this was a scam. So basically the guys who stole it probably never even turn the thing on. They just sell it for cash and get out of dodge. You will just find a bunch of suckers who couldn't turn down a good deal, and what kind of prosecution rate do we have on those? The thief already go his money, so no deterrent there. Never mind the obvious fact you can change those, but the thief won't bother as he is just going to sell it. So again, for all of this effort exactly what is going to be accomplished?
Well one thing that comes to mind is that some of the best programmers tend to be of personality type INTJ. The frequency of INTJ in male vs. female population is clearly shown to be radically different. Let's look at all of the INTx types:
Intellectuals (NT)
Population Male Female
ENTJ - Chief 4% 5.5% 2.5%
ENTP - Originator 4.5% 6% 3%
INTJ - Strategist 1.5% 2.5% 0.5%
INTP - Engineer 2.5% 4% 1%
All NTs 12.5% 18% 7%
Seems to pretty clearly show why we might have a difference in the number of male vs. female programmers, huh? I doubt the males are forcing personality types on them.
Because it used to be more of a 9 to 5 professional job with realistic pay and expectations. Now it is a 60 hour a week grind where you must spend much of your remaining free time keeping up with the latest trends so you have a job when your current place either burns through its budget, or hires cheaper h1bs. It's not exactly the kind of environment for prospective mothers, for sure. Never mind the inherent solitude of todays world, as opposed to the past where there was a lot more down time as you waited for compiles, or time at the card sorter.
The industry has changed dramatically, and not in a family friendly way.
Except I do work with the CEO, he does know who I am, and I do get incentive bonuses for pulling our butts out of the fire and making the customer happy. We are a consulting company, and work is noticed. So I appreciate your feedback and understand where you may be coming from in some cases, as I have worked in large companies buried in the ranks before, but it is not the case here. I actually don't expect my coworkers to work 60+ hour weeks, and I try not to myself. I just wish they would put in their honest 8 hours a day and not spend a quarter of those 8 hours goofing off while we fall behind. So I am talking about a very different situation here.
Unfortunately, that is my job as the lead. I get the flack if it doesn't get done, and I answer to the customer. They do not. That said, everyone understands what is going on, they talk to them about it. Then they promise to do better, but since the market is so crazy and we are never going to actually do something punitive to anyone, it starts all over again. At the end of the day I do care that the customer sees I can deliver. Eventually I just want to shuck this whole mess and do my own consulting with a few really good guys and call it good. Having those network connections that know you are the guy that comes through is actually important.
So in short, it's my personal reputation on the line here, and I do the best I can to create accountability but we have no effective people management in place to hold people accountable. I just try to roll them off the project as soon as I can, then they sit on the bench and don't make bonus. Hopefully when no one wants them on their project, and they get the crappy projects, they will learn. The problem, though, is almost all of the new hires are like this and someone DOES eventually have to help you, and we have found a few gems.
As I mentioned, yes, Agile as a methodology is not a bad thing. It just is so easy to get wrong. Most places I see focus on the JIRA like aspects of it and the day to day ceremonies of the scrum process without actually looking at any long term goals. I agree the work items should be broken down to two week (or whatever) intervals of work. But you still have to have some idea of where the heck you are going and what the goal posts are at the end of the day. That doesn't mean it can't shift, but the iterations should be getting you somewhere, not just wandering in circles like seems to happen.
I agree that Agile methodologies in their many forms can be great. It just seems so few people get them right. At least in waterfall (I am definitely not advocating for that) it was readily apparent nobody had a clue early in the process and people would just get stuck before they got going. Now, we just have a way of delaying that forever.
That said, I work on enterprise scale big data systems, not web UI type stuff. I think you can wander around a lot more on UI/UX stuff and not sink the ship. You can't really do that with the stuff I work on or the project fails miserably.
I've been in the software industry for a bit, and am appalled at what companies think attract great talent. It is so far off base today, that no wonder people aren't happy. Let's take a look at the things they believe are great:
Open office environment: What they say is it is great collaboration. What it really means is that you sit at benches back to back and face to face with your coworkers all wearing headphones. None of them talk, you have little personal space, and if you don't actually want to listen to music, you hear 3 different songs through the headphones. Never mind the Skype calls going on around you, or everyone's computer/phone./tablet all going off at the same time as the company wide email goes out. Good luck concentrating.
Game room/exercise room: What this means is more distractions for the young workers who already can't focus on their task for five minutes and get something done. Now they need to bug you to play with them and wonder why you say you don't have time as we are already way behind. So now you end up doing their tasks while they are shooting pool just to make sure the client gets what they were promised. Basically, more people NOT working while at work, forcing you into more hours to pick up the slack. BTW, how many hours a week does your company actually expect out of you?
Agile: A form of development co-opted by management and companies to micro manage you at every possibility, without actually establishing any direction. Yes, I know this is not how it is supposed to work, but after being in many companies doing it, it is all too often done this way. Everyone gets creative about 'what they did yesterday', and 'what they will do today', yet we still don't have a clear direction on 'what the heck we are doing'. That gets frustrating.
Unlimited vacation: What this actually means is no guaranteed vacation. You get to take it 'if you have time'. So the people who don't actually work take tons, and those who actually care about delivery get squeezed down. Reward is opposite to accomplishments
No Real WFH: Most places frown on WFH, as you are supposed to be collaborating. So you sit on your bench desk with trendy uncomfortable chair with said coworkers all plugged into their music not talking anyways. Why couldn't I work from home?
Quality of code: This one is debatable probably, but in the last three to five years the quality is so poor it is scary. People are rushed and rewarded for 'just getting it out' even though it fails all the time. How about rewarding people for putting something out that actually works and is stable? Could we actually teach proper coding in college?
What I really want is an actual office with walls and a window. Give me a door that I can leave open most of the time when people have questions, but I can close when things are crazy or tough. Give me co-workers that want to solve real problems, and care about unit tests, comments, and making a GOOD solution. Pay me for delivering quality, and more importantly, stop trying to figure out if I am operating at 100% efficiency all of the time. Define what the heck we are trying to accomplish up front, and then iterate rapidly on the solution. That would make me happy, anyways.....
Switched to a business plan and now I have unlimited data, a static ip, and a dedicated channel on the coax without sharing it with my neighbors. You are locked in for two years, but the service is great compared to the consumer offerings. The consumer service slows to a crawl at night due to everyone watching movies and gaming. My service is exactly the same speed.
I really, really doubt if the phone is truly 'off' they can bug it. There is no power draw going on. Either that, or let the battery die.... Put it in a tinfoil pouch if you are really that afraid of it. If it was on and they could access it, the phone would die pretty quick as the draw for it to transmit information would be strong. I have not seen this when I turn my phone truly off (not just standby). I usually take my phone camping in case I break down on the way there and need assistance. I turn it hard off so I don't use up the battery. It always comes back at full charge....
Maybe there is some hidden monitor for 'this' signal type thing going on, but I still have to imagine that would put some draw on it for sure. As I mentioned my preference would be a burner phone with prepaid time just in case I need it on the way there or back to get help. That said, I don't go to burning man (way too many people for me), and prefer a quiet desert experience with a few close friends and a whole lot less cost.
If they do have this hidden feature, though, I doubt they would risk tipping their hand on it just to log users. They will go the far easier route and just capture all of the people sending pics of themselves around to all their friends.
Sounds like if you are going to burning man, you need a burner phone for the event. I am guessing they are setting up a Stingray device and capturing communications at the event. Simple paid for cash burner phone, and you defeat a lot of that. Or better yet, just don't turn your phone on and avoid the whole mess.
I spent two years in a mountain cabin living off grid, and working as a software consultant. I used Hughesnet for satellite service, but this was in a remote cabin at 10,000 feet, and a 12 mile snowmobile in. Hughesnet is laggy, but works for basic stuff that you need to do day to day. Solar is completely doable, but you have to not just connect a panel to your laptop and call it good.
Then I got a girlfriend and moved back to the city (still keeping and visiting the cabin), so now I do lots of long weekend things. For that, I have a mobile hotspot with a cellphone extender and a yagi antenna I can put up on a pole if needed. Let's me spend a couple extra days out there, then take the weekend off and shut down. I use a solar panel permantly mounted on the truck, and two extra ones I can stand up on the ground. That charges two large 6v Trojan batteries in series to make 12v. I have 12v chargers for everything, and an inverter for those odd things you can't get 12v for. I have an ARB cooler that runs on 12v, so no ice required and cold for as long as you want. Also have ham radio equipment to send emails from those really remote places where all else fails. You can see pictures of my various setups as it relates to ham radio at:
https://www.qrz.com/lookup/k7j...
It is all very doable if you plan ahead and have big enough batteries to get you through the lulls in sun. I figure with my current setup I could stay out almost indefinitely, especially since I can take warm beer in bulk, and feed it into the cooler as I go since it is all electric and no ice.
So basically they are just giving them a text book in video form? People are going to pay tuition for this? Does this actually count as a degree in this modern world?
I mean the whole value of the education was the ability to ask questions when you didn't understand things, and the interactive coursework. If you don't have that, it's just a self study certification at that point. The sad thing is I am going to have to work with the products of this 'education' system here in the near future. It's already bad enough....
You do realize that those of us who got into tech were not exactly popular in the guys department either, right? I mean in highschool it was not the computer club guys getting the dates to the prom, it was the football jocks and such. I got into tech despite the many, many social pressures against being a smart kid. This is true for both genders in America. So don't believe that some magical boys club is promoting up our youth in this industry. The entire pressure in high school for both genders was to shut up, be stupid, and fit right in.
Sports are cool, math is for nerds is what society pushes. Both genders get this until college, and even then the girls didn't want to date the comp sci guys and went for the hockey players. I stuck with it despite all of this, and I don't expect that to change any time soon.
OK, I've worked in the industry for a very long time now, and it can be 'fun' for the few bits where you actually get to prototype or work on the bulk of the features. That takes 10 percent of the time. The rest of the time you are going to be trying to find obscure bugs, introduced by crappy programmers rushing to get features out. Meanwhile you will be micro-managed through the 'agile' process asking you to account for every hour of your time. Then we will throw ill defined features at you, and expect them to be done within this two week time period, and be shocked when you reach the end of two weeks, and they are not done. This is usually due to the fact that meanwhile 16 support tickets were also thrown at you that are all critical in nature. Then you have those late night calls with your Indian counter parts that you can barely understand or stay awake for. But it is fun!
I don't know what planet these people live on. It is a tough career with crazy deadlines and weird policies. You have to constantly keep up on the latest trends, or you will be viewed as 'too old' for the job. Meanwhile, computers never sleep, nor do they expect you to. You have to push back constantly to maintain your personal time.
That said, I love computers. I love programming. I just don't love the industry as it is now. There is a reason that most women don't want in. They may in fact be much smarter than men in this regards.
Slashdot Mirror
The bizarre thing is it is now more difficult to pilot a drone than actually fly a manned ultralight with 5 gallons of gasoline on it weighing in the hundreds of pounds. You can just build one and fly it with no training and no registration. Just head on up into the sky. I know, I built one and flew it for quite a bit. Yet now my drone means I have to register with them, because obviously that drone is much more of a danger to the sky compared to my full sized ultralight.
Go figure. Gotta love the logic in government laws.
If it is for an annoying dog, just get one of the anti bark devices that look like a bird house first. There are several with good reviews on Amazon. They don't work on all dogs, but there often is success with them. It is worth a shot since they are only like 50 bucks, and soundproofing your home is going to cost a lot more.
Otherwise what I have found the most effective is outside vegetation around your property border. Gives you privacy from both sight and sound. Also pretty....
It is exploding....
It is crazy how a song from quite awhile ago is still so relevant. Somehow it feels that we will foolishly repeat the same stupid pattern over and over again. Simply using some screwed up country for the bigger countries to fight battles, all in the name of the greater good. Seems like if we really cared about solving the problems in Syria we would all join together in a common agreed upon plan. I can't imagine any government standing up to the full force of the world united.
But instead, we are on the eve of destruction.....
The sad thing is that most programmers are still using simple string concatenation to write their SQL programmatically. In this modern day, that is beyond silly. If you use a DSL like jooq, you get several advantages. First off, all strings will automatically be bounded and avoid the simple injection tactics that most people use. Second, you can change databases on a whim by just changing the dialect. This is great for testing and using in memory databases for unit tests. If people just took that simple step, very few attacks would remain, and they would probably be much happier programmers with far fewer bugs!
Actually, it is about having fun flying as well. Modern Phantom 3 devices can be flown FPV (First Person View), which opens up a whole new world compared to the old RC planes where you can only fly short distances. If flown safely in safe areas, there is little risk that these drones can cause. If any plane if flying below 400 feet over anywhere, they sure as heck better be extra cautious anyways, as there are all kinds of hazards there, of which the random drone is the least of their problems.
Also, there are people like me who use them more for the photographic and video opportunities. Not spying on people like some pervert. That is like saying we should register cameras cause some sickos use them to take spy pictures in bathrooms. That is the vast minority. Do you want to know what most of us do? Here is a great example and explain to me how I could ever catch this scenery any other way:
Drone Flight in Utah Desert
It is just like any hobby. There will be people who abuse it, and the vast majority of people who are just having fun. I am not that paranoid about people spying on me with drones to ban the entire hobby. The real point is registration will do nothing to stop it. People like myself already put their phone numbers on their planes so if lost, there is a chance they will come back to me. The people who are the problems will not do anything. More tax dollars to a solution to nothing.
Nothing happened. No hijackings, no downed planes, absolutely nothing. Maybe we don't need all of this security theater after all and could just leave our shoes on and take some water with us through the gate then? Save a few tax dollars?
Of course it will go the other way and will be a huge call for more strict rules and procedures. Sigh.....
I was at a 'hot' company a little over a year ago. They literally had the who's who of silicon valley and the east coast investing in them. I figured it was a great opportunity to be involved with at the time. Then I was sitting in a company wide meeting (kind of a pep rally that happened every week) and the head guy gets up and says exactly this:
"Look around you. Notice you don't see very much grey hair? That's on purpose. We want people on they way up, not their way out!"
I was shocked that they would be so blatant about it. Not even a hesitation in a corporate wide meeting of 500 people and recorded to boot. If I didn't care about torpedoing my own career, I would have filed a suit that day, being 44 at the time. Funny thing was their code was some of the worst I have ever seen and was having to re-write large portions of it do to the horrible architecture and coding patterns in place. Literally in just a few months I had re-written what was not working for their largest clients and had it running in a fraction of the time. The desperately needed people with experience.
Once I heard that I put my resume out to a couple of people, had a job offer within two weeks, and am making 50% more than I was there anyways with rapid promotion within a few months, and been at my current job exactly a year now. So in the long run, their loss. But I can tell you it is in fact real and blatant out there.
That said as a programmer if you keep your skills up, there are still plenty of jobs out there. It's just a bit more work than it should be to find a good one.
Umm, longer hours does not mean anything when it comes to actual output. It is one of the biggest fallacies of the software industry. I am one of the older programmers, being over 40, where I work. I work with kids straight out of college. First off, half the time they are goofing off playing ping pong, pool, or board games. The other half, they are throwing code together that kind of works but will never be maintainable. They could spend 80 hours a week doing that and we would be further behind in the long run.
The older coders may only put in the 9 or 10 hours a day. But you know what, we get to work, get it done, and it works right the first time. We have tests, proper coding and documentation. I am also not looking for my company to entertain me and provide all kinds of crazy things just to keep me happy. More importantly, if the company is treating me fairly, I am not going to jump in one or two years because 'I am bored and need a new challenge' like the cheap hires.
Now I know these are generalizations, like everything else, but sometimes you get what you pay for. Hire one guy with real experience across the board earned from the hard knocks of actually having been there, and he is probably worth several (if not more) of the 'cheap' under 30's who really just haven't had the experience yet of what mistakes cost. Pair them together, and you probably have the best of both worlds.
So google employees only are expected to work 40 hours? I am calling BS on that one for sure, or are they not one of the Big 5? Also, if you require all of your employees to move to Silicon Valley for their job, aren't you kind of limiting your pool right there? I am not moving from where I am to some place where a condo costs more than my house in the mountains with a yard and such.
If these companies were truly so desperate for quality programmers, they would try some new techniques to attract talent. I would consider working for any of them if they allowed working from home primarily as an option, so I could live in a more affordable area. Also, stop the weird interview techniques that have absolutely nothing to do with programming. I am a programmer, and do not particularly care for an interview with a bunch of riddles. Ask me to create you a software program in pseudo code, and you will see what I bring to the table. Making me jump through silly hoops is demeaning, and not productive (as they have determined themselves). Also, don't low ball me on pay. If there is such a huge shortage of workers, why haven't top end programmer's salaries become equivalent to doctor's salaries?
Instead what we have seen is that low end salaries have increased quite a bit as they basically want indentured servants who spend ridiculous hours churning out ill informed code. I sometimes am scared for this industry as I watch the quality around me rapidly decline.
I share your pain here. I absolutely hate open office plans, as it is very hard to concentrate on true difficult problems. Never mind the complete lack of personal space as you are typically on a 'bench' type environment. The worst trend in programming I have ever seen.
That said, I don't think it is actually done to encourage collaboration. The corporate world has just convinced people of that. Even all of the obvious extroverts in my office immediately slap headphones on and isolate themselves anyways. I have yet to see this environment in any example encourage people to work together. I think the corporations just love the cost savings in that your personal space is now down to almost nothing and the furniture is crappy desks with crappy chairs that are 'modern'. They just sell the cheapness as 'encourages collaboration'.... I figure soon enough it will be two to a desk at all times for 'pair programming' to ensure the final nail in the coffin for me as a programmer....
Except how is student government for 'smart kids'? I've never heard of government being full of smart people before....
Seriously, though, almost all of that stuff was for the popular kids, not the truly smart ones. My school growing up was horrible for this, but once a year they would throw us a bone. There would be a Saturday that was at a college campus and was for truly smart individuals. We all got to go and pick 'courses' to attend, given by college professors, on all kinds of cool topics for a kid in elementary school. We all got to hang out together, and be friends in an introverted way. It was great. Then it was back to the quagmire and ignoring in public school for the rest of the year. Man, I do not miss that at all. Then I went to an engineering school and everything was so much better.
I just had a friend who had their house broken into, and the person who bought their laptop actually contacted them after realizing it was stolen. They had bought it at a gas station from a guy 'selling his stuff to get gas money'. Yeah, the guy should have realized this was a scam. So basically the guys who stole it probably never even turn the thing on. They just sell it for cash and get out of dodge. You will just find a bunch of suckers who couldn't turn down a good deal, and what kind of prosecution rate do we have on those? The thief already go his money, so no deterrent there. Never mind the obvious fact you can change those, but the thief won't bother as he is just going to sell it. So again, for all of this effort exactly what is going to be accomplished?
Well one thing that comes to mind is that some of the best programmers tend to be of personality type INTJ. The frequency of INTJ in male vs. female population is clearly shown to be radically different. Let's look at all of the INTx types:
Intellectuals (NT)
Population Male Female
ENTJ - Chief 4% 5.5% 2.5%
ENTP - Originator 4.5% 6% 3%
INTJ - Strategist 1.5% 2.5% 0.5%
INTP - Engineer 2.5% 4% 1%
All NTs 12.5% 18% 7%
Seems to pretty clearly show why we might have a difference in the number of male vs. female programmers, huh? I doubt the males are forcing personality types on them.
Because it used to be more of a 9 to 5 professional job with realistic pay and expectations. Now it is a 60 hour a week grind where you must spend much of your remaining free time keeping up with the latest trends so you have a job when your current place either burns through its budget, or hires cheaper h1bs. It's not exactly the kind of environment for prospective mothers, for sure. Never mind the inherent solitude of todays world, as opposed to the past where there was a lot more down time as you waited for compiles, or time at the card sorter. The industry has changed dramatically, and not in a family friendly way.
Except I do work with the CEO, he does know who I am, and I do get incentive bonuses for pulling our butts out of the fire and making the customer happy. We are a consulting company, and work is noticed. So I appreciate your feedback and understand where you may be coming from in some cases, as I have worked in large companies buried in the ranks before, but it is not the case here. I actually don't expect my coworkers to work 60+ hour weeks, and I try not to myself. I just wish they would put in their honest 8 hours a day and not spend a quarter of those 8 hours goofing off while we fall behind. So I am talking about a very different situation here.
Unfortunately, that is my job as the lead. I get the flack if it doesn't get done, and I answer to the customer. They do not. That said, everyone understands what is going on, they talk to them about it. Then they promise to do better, but since the market is so crazy and we are never going to actually do something punitive to anyone, it starts all over again. At the end of the day I do care that the customer sees I can deliver. Eventually I just want to shuck this whole mess and do my own consulting with a few really good guys and call it good. Having those network connections that know you are the guy that comes through is actually important.
So in short, it's my personal reputation on the line here, and I do the best I can to create accountability but we have no effective people management in place to hold people accountable. I just try to roll them off the project as soon as I can, then they sit on the bench and don't make bonus. Hopefully when no one wants them on their project, and they get the crappy projects, they will learn. The problem, though, is almost all of the new hires are like this and someone DOES eventually have to help you, and we have found a few gems.
As I mentioned, yes, Agile as a methodology is not a bad thing. It just is so easy to get wrong. Most places I see focus on the JIRA like aspects of it and the day to day ceremonies of the scrum process without actually looking at any long term goals. I agree the work items should be broken down to two week (or whatever) intervals of work. But you still have to have some idea of where the heck you are going and what the goal posts are at the end of the day. That doesn't mean it can't shift, but the iterations should be getting you somewhere, not just wandering in circles like seems to happen.
I agree that Agile methodologies in their many forms can be great. It just seems so few people get them right. At least in waterfall (I am definitely not advocating for that) it was readily apparent nobody had a clue early in the process and people would just get stuck before they got going. Now, we just have a way of delaying that forever.
That said, I work on enterprise scale big data systems, not web UI type stuff. I think you can wander around a lot more on UI/UX stuff and not sink the ship. You can't really do that with the stuff I work on or the project fails miserably.
I've been in the software industry for a bit, and am appalled at what companies think attract great talent. It is so far off base today, that no wonder people aren't happy. Let's take a look at the things they believe are great:
Open office environment: What they say is it is great collaboration. What it really means is that you sit at benches back to back and face to face with your coworkers all wearing headphones. None of them talk, you have little personal space, and if you don't actually want to listen to music, you hear 3 different songs through the headphones. Never mind the Skype calls going on around you, or everyone's computer/phone./tablet all going off at the same time as the company wide email goes out. Good luck concentrating.
Game room/exercise room: What this means is more distractions for the young workers who already can't focus on their task for five minutes and get something done. Now they need to bug you to play with them and wonder why you say you don't have time as we are already way behind. So now you end up doing their tasks while they are shooting pool just to make sure the client gets what they were promised. Basically, more people NOT working while at work, forcing you into more hours to pick up the slack. BTW, how many hours a week does your company actually expect out of you?
Agile: A form of development co-opted by management and companies to micro manage you at every possibility, without actually establishing any direction. Yes, I know this is not how it is supposed to work, but after being in many companies doing it, it is all too often done this way. Everyone gets creative about 'what they did yesterday', and 'what they will do today', yet we still don't have a clear direction on 'what the heck we are doing'. That gets frustrating.
Unlimited vacation: What this actually means is no guaranteed vacation. You get to take it 'if you have time'. So the people who don't actually work take tons, and those who actually care about delivery get squeezed down. Reward is opposite to accomplishments
No Real WFH: Most places frown on WFH, as you are supposed to be collaborating. So you sit on your bench desk with trendy uncomfortable chair with said coworkers all plugged into their music not talking anyways. Why couldn't I work from home?
Quality of code: This one is debatable probably, but in the last three to five years the quality is so poor it is scary. People are rushed and rewarded for 'just getting it out' even though it fails all the time. How about rewarding people for putting something out that actually works and is stable? Could we actually teach proper coding in college?
What I really want is an actual office with walls and a window. Give me a door that I can leave open most of the time when people have questions, but I can close when things are crazy or tough. Give me co-workers that want to solve real problems, and care about unit tests, comments, and making a GOOD solution. Pay me for delivering quality, and more importantly, stop trying to figure out if I am operating at 100% efficiency all of the time. Define what the heck we are trying to accomplish up front, and then iterate rapidly on the solution. That would make me happy, anyways.....
Rant off.....
Switched to a business plan and now I have unlimited data, a static ip, and a dedicated channel on the coax without sharing it with my neighbors. You are locked in for two years, but the service is great compared to the consumer offerings. The consumer service slows to a crawl at night due to everyone watching movies and gaming. My service is exactly the same speed.
I really, really doubt if the phone is truly 'off' they can bug it. There is no power draw going on. Either that, or let the battery die.... Put it in a tinfoil pouch if you are really that afraid of it. If it was on and they could access it, the phone would die pretty quick as the draw for it to transmit information would be strong. I have not seen this when I turn my phone truly off (not just standby). I usually take my phone camping in case I break down on the way there and need assistance. I turn it hard off so I don't use up the battery. It always comes back at full charge....
Maybe there is some hidden monitor for 'this' signal type thing going on, but I still have to imagine that would put some draw on it for sure. As I mentioned my preference would be a burner phone with prepaid time just in case I need it on the way there or back to get help. That said, I don't go to burning man (way too many people for me), and prefer a quiet desert experience with a few close friends and a whole lot less cost.
If they do have this hidden feature, though, I doubt they would risk tipping their hand on it just to log users. They will go the far easier route and just capture all of the people sending pics of themselves around to all their friends.
Sounds like if you are going to burning man, you need a burner phone for the event. I am guessing they are setting up a Stingray device and capturing communications at the event. Simple paid for cash burner phone, and you defeat a lot of that. Or better yet, just don't turn your phone on and avoid the whole mess.
I spent two years in a mountain cabin living off grid, and working as a software consultant. I used Hughesnet for satellite service, but this was in a remote cabin at 10,000 feet, and a 12 mile snowmobile in. Hughesnet is laggy, but works for basic stuff that you need to do day to day. Solar is completely doable, but you have to not just connect a panel to your laptop and call it good. Then I got a girlfriend and moved back to the city (still keeping and visiting the cabin), so now I do lots of long weekend things. For that, I have a mobile hotspot with a cellphone extender and a yagi antenna I can put up on a pole if needed. Let's me spend a couple extra days out there, then take the weekend off and shut down. I use a solar panel permantly mounted on the truck, and two extra ones I can stand up on the ground. That charges two large 6v Trojan batteries in series to make 12v. I have 12v chargers for everything, and an inverter for those odd things you can't get 12v for. I have an ARB cooler that runs on 12v, so no ice required and cold for as long as you want. Also have ham radio equipment to send emails from those really remote places where all else fails. You can see pictures of my various setups as it relates to ham radio at: https://www.qrz.com/lookup/k7j... It is all very doable if you plan ahead and have big enough batteries to get you through the lulls in sun. I figure with my current setup I could stay out almost indefinitely, especially since I can take warm beer in bulk, and feed it into the cooler as I go since it is all electric and no ice.
So basically they are just giving them a text book in video form? People are going to pay tuition for this? Does this actually count as a degree in this modern world? I mean the whole value of the education was the ability to ask questions when you didn't understand things, and the interactive coursework. If you don't have that, it's just a self study certification at that point. The sad thing is I am going to have to work with the products of this 'education' system here in the near future. It's already bad enough....
You do realize that those of us who got into tech were not exactly popular in the guys department either, right? I mean in highschool it was not the computer club guys getting the dates to the prom, it was the football jocks and such. I got into tech despite the many, many social pressures against being a smart kid. This is true for both genders in America. So don't believe that some magical boys club is promoting up our youth in this industry. The entire pressure in high school for both genders was to shut up, be stupid, and fit right in.
Sports are cool, math is for nerds is what society pushes. Both genders get this until college, and even then the girls didn't want to date the comp sci guys and went for the hockey players. I stuck with it despite all of this, and I don't expect that to change any time soon.
OK, I've worked in the industry for a very long time now, and it can be 'fun' for the few bits where you actually get to prototype or work on the bulk of the features. That takes 10 percent of the time. The rest of the time you are going to be trying to find obscure bugs, introduced by crappy programmers rushing to get features out. Meanwhile you will be micro-managed through the 'agile' process asking you to account for every hour of your time. Then we will throw ill defined features at you, and expect them to be done within this two week time period, and be shocked when you reach the end of two weeks, and they are not done. This is usually due to the fact that meanwhile 16 support tickets were also thrown at you that are all critical in nature. Then you have those late night calls with your Indian counter parts that you can barely understand or stay awake for. But it is fun!
I don't know what planet these people live on. It is a tough career with crazy deadlines and weird policies. You have to constantly keep up on the latest trends, or you will be viewed as 'too old' for the job. Meanwhile, computers never sleep, nor do they expect you to. You have to push back constantly to maintain your personal time.
That said, I love computers. I love programming. I just don't love the industry as it is now. There is a reason that most women don't want in. They may in fact be much smarter than men in this regards.