Java's virtual machine, for the first several revisions, sucked ass and ran extremely slowly, cutting the general user experience on a Pentium I 100Mhz machine down to that of Windows 2.0 on a 80286 runing at 14 Mhz. If it wasn't for that, I would have probably been a lot more serious persuing Java as a "language I should learn".
Ok, I'd like to specifically address this one, as my nephew (and perhaps myself, I'm almost afraid to find out due to the horrific nature of what heavy metal detox involves, but it's worth it in his case because he's only 6 and stands a half of a chance at a more normal childhood, where I'm 30 and rather set in my peculiar learned avoidance behaviors*) was misdiagnosed with Asperger's when it was really heavy metal poisoning, long after mercury had been removed from childhood vaccines.
He tested out 15 times the normal level of mercury- awfully strange given the fact he had *NO* mercury laced vaccinations.
But two items he did have in his life: Eating fish raised on a farm in Oregon (in the last year, the EPA has been unable to find any fish-bearing body of water in the entire Pacific Northwest that *didn't* have detectable levels of mercury in the fish), and an early-life operation that required him to take very strong antibiotics. The theory goes that this killed off the bacteria in his gut that helps human beings sublimate mercury (as well as digest gluten and casin) and sure enough, he began to respond to a GFCF diet. He's now on a much more strict diet (it reminds me of the Atkins diet, suplemented with extra stuff to avoid sources of mercury) combined with Chelation Therapy and antibiotic/probiotic therapy to kill off the bad bacteria that has colonized his digestive tract and replace it with the good stuff. HOPEFULLY, by his 9th birthday, he'll get to have an angelfood cake again, AND be basically cured of his autism.
---------------
* One thing I'm afraid of losing is the ability to hunker down and concentrate on a single programming problem with a lack of need of further input from the customer. I appreciate this autistic behavior in that it's how I make a living.
Never specialize. That's a lesson I learned early on and it's one that turned me out of IT and into a field where there is no need to specialize to go far. Specializing gets you pigeon-holed, and pigeon holes are eventually closed off for being obsolete.
That is the most brilliant point I've seen in this thread. It's both completely true and completely false at the same time! True in that this is the manager's point of view, and anybody ambitious enough to become a manager SHOULD follow this advice. False in that anybody with even a Bachelor's degree of Software Engineering was probably exposed to an average of 4 languages per term (either semester or quad, depending on the school) and knows how to learn a new language in a weekend. Congradulations on identifying the main problem with HR people hiring technologists, and doing something to get yourself out of the rat race to become obsolete!
Yes, in the good old slavery days, you could do that, because you ownder a person. Unfortunately, these days, people look down on owning people, so it is a bit tricky. So it is a bit economically unfeasable to pour all this money into someone, who can just leave anytime they want. Maybe you can stop posting this crap to every story now.
You have to give loyalty to get loyalty. Treat people right, instead of as resources to just throw away when they become "unprofitable" and maybe they won't leave at the drop of a hat. Instead of supporting right-to-fire laws in right-to-work states, try actually signing mutually beneficial *contracts* and following them instead of breaking them. Instead of just throwing people onto unemployment- and cutting off their health care- keep three years of their salary in the bank and run your own employment agency if you need to lay people off. There is a LOT that can be done to change that situation.
Well if racism demands racism here is my contribution "Europeans go home" What are white skinned people doing on this continent anyway? Asia is a lot closer to America than Europe is. Why dont these European squatters just go home.
YEAH! Somebody understands!
How does that feel and if you happen to be black same goes for Africans too.
I actually completely agree. I'm enough of a mixed breed to have Native American ancestors- including distant cousins who in the 1830s mainly died off of a mysterious MALARIA outbreak in OREGON (If you think THAT was natural and not "humor" based microbe warfare, then there's a bridge I want to sell you on the Columbia that hasn't been built yet). Cascadia for Cascadians- the return of the Kwakiutal First Nation- would be a reasonable thing to me.
Just because you are a frustated out of work bum doesnt give you the right to insult others.
Actually, I haven't been out of work since 2003.
America is all about mixing many cultures and intermarriage between different nationalities is what makes America so great.
Maybe to you- but I'm tired of cleaning grafitti in languages I don't understand (mainly Sanskrit or Spanish, due to the high class and low class immigrants we get in the area) off of my fence.
If you want to be insular and propagate the master race I have news for you buddy . Your master Hitler had his go at it and failed. You are 50 years too late. Now go jump off a bridge or something.
Ah, too bad- I thought you started out so well- this isn't about RACE. It's about CULTURE.
Training on specific skills is the easiest thing to fix. What is hard is to find quality people, who will invest in the work, take pride in what they do, be able to communicate and collaborate with others, have a positive attitude, etc.
Actually, that's pretty easy to fix too- but the problem is our entire economy is against fixing it. I went from having a postive attitude about my programming to a negative one when I was told point blank by a PHB that any project that didn't show a profit on the next quarter's bottom line would be axed. In fact, to make sure that ALL projects that lived more than two quarters were profitable, the real deadline for time to market would be 4 months.
If you are never allowed to complete a project, it's kind of hard to take pride in what you do.
This one is kind of outdated, it represents the state I was in at the end of 2003, when I finally decided resumes don't do anybody any good. I went a different tack- I spent the next 2.5 years triming outdated skills off of this already-trimed resume, and contracting for the State. When somebody retired out of my department, I applied for his position, and have just finished 6 months of trial service. The pay is worse, but the benefits are better, and it fits my new goal of never being without health insurance ever again (having a kid with Cerebral Palsy makes that a priority).
Based on your apparent assumptions, I think that you've illustrated exactly what I am _not_ looking to in a new hire. You assumed that we're looking for people with a fixed well defined skill, when the purpose of that inteview question is precisely the opposite.
Then you should choose something much more challenging- perhaps a double pass n-item bubble sort?
When we ask interviewees to average an array of integers, we are not simply testing for a simple skill; if somebody simply recites something they've learned at ITT tech or out of a book without much insight, we probably won't hire them. We look for people to anticipate unknowns; for example overflow issues. We look for people to ask questions like "Will this be used in a financial system? That will determine whether we should use floating point or not" or "Should we use error codes or exceptions". The best candidates are the ones that come up with responses that I did not anticipate. People have to be able to handle open ended problems.
What you don't seem to understand is that just about anybody with a 105 IQ or better can handle open ended problems- and asking them about an obviously closed problem like averaging an array of numbers just ain't going to get you where you want to go.
IT is not about teaching people to average arrays of integers and then having them do that, like you would a burger flipper, a welder, or a worker on a car assembly line. Its about being in undefined situations, readily adapting to things that nobody has anticipated. In my line of work, there is simply no way that I could simply train people to do that on the job - my hands are full adapting to new stuff every day without having to hold people's hand. At my current place, they are growing and they tried "lowering the bar" to less talented people. It turned out to be a disaster as they required too much handholding, and the talented people invariably had to go back and clean everything up. So they decided instead to keep the bar high and pay the few qualified candidates a boatload.
Then don't try to train it on the job. Try something NOVEL like giving up profit for a couple of quarters to get a work force that works.
People that you describe simply have no problem finding jobs, as those are precisely the sorts of people that get hired nowadays., and have recruiters breathing down their necks all of the times. That ability trumps fancy buzzwords on resumes. If you know of any in greater Boston, let me know.
That is me on the other coast- the last time I had a call from a RECRUITER was 2003. For such people in greater Boston, I'd point you towards the Programmer's Guild- there are lots of people there who were replaced by H-1bs all over the nation.
Men, apparently, need not apply- these specific behaviors are female symptoms mostly. I wonder, though- is this the cause of the difference between heavy metal poisoning causing autism and genetics causing autism?
From TFA: * Rett Syndrome (RTT) is a severe childhood neurological disorder, diagnosed almost exclusively in girls. The most physically disabling of the autism spectrum disorders, RTT strikes at random, affecting an estimated 1 in every 10,000 females.
* First symptoms usually appear between 6 to 18 months of age. Development slows or begins to regress. Children at this stage may exhibit the social withdrawal often seen in autism, or cry inconsolably for months as previously acquired language and motor skills disappear. In classic RTT, this regression is accompanied by the onset of constant, compulsive hand wringing and the loss of all functional hand use. The progression of symptoms varies across the RTT spectrum. Many children become wheelchair bound; those who walk display an abnormal stiff-legged gait.
* As the disease progresses, abnormal voluntary and involuntary movements reflect increasing neurological deficits. The children suffer apraxia, the inability to organize voluntary movement. Parkinson-like tremors are common, as are disordered breathing patterns and problems with chewing and swallowing. Some children require feeding tubes or supplementary oxygen. Abnormal brain wave patterns are present in RTT; a percentage of the children experience seizures.
* The only autism spectrum disorder with a known genetic cause, RTT results from mutations in the gene MECP2. This gene was first discovered by Adrian Bird, Ph.D in 1990. MECP2 regulates the expression of other genes by turning them off at the appropriate time.
* Mutations in MECP2 were identified as the cause of RTT in 1999 in the lab of Huda Zoghbi, M.D. MECP2 mutations are now being seen in some cases of childhood schizophrenia, classic autism and learning disabilities.
This isn't about hammering nails into wood. There are plenty of people with ".NET experience". Many of the unqualified people have CS degrees as well as additional training (e.g. MCSD). You can have all the training in the world but still lack the aptitude, creativity, and initiative required for many jobs.
And you can have all the training, aptitude, creativity, and initiative required for those jobs and still get your resume round filed for somebody who assumes Americans can't do math (an attitude put forth repeatedly by H-1b supporters).
Then it's a good thing it got downmoded, isn't it? For the real explaination of why I went racist on purpose, see either my reply to the other guy, or better yet click on my new sig and try to decide for yourself if all cultures can fit in the melting pot.
The people that have not been rehired after the.com crash are the people that never belonged in IT.
AND the people who were thrown out in the street after the.com crash and went into a different industry to survive.
Today, the biggest problem is finding qualified people; where I work there is such a recruiting effort that people get $1500 bonuses for every hire.
Then the people doing the hiring are incompetant- such people are available in every IT union in the country, from Washtech to the Programmer's Guild.
Of course, that doesn't mean that the dumb people have not been fully flushed out yet - you would be surprised at how many people show up for an interview and cannot write a function to average an array of integers. You cannot simply train people for IT; you either have it or you don't. If you could train people for IT, companies would invest in training programs rather than hire highly paid people to develop recruiting programs and paying boatloads of money for referrals.
It's exactly that bigotry that I find incomprehensible. I can train just about any hobo to write a function to average an array of integers.
The best thing about the.com crash is that it weeded out (at least some) of the drudge out of the IT profession.
And the worst thing about it is that it wasn't that selective- and ended up discouraging kids from entering the field at all as they watched their parents, aunts, and uncles turn to truck driving and other certificate-based employment to survive.
Then why are you replacing the rather large unemployed pool of talented people out there with H-1bs? Is it racism (you assume that just because they worked for a.com, or were born in America, that they're not worth interviewing?) Or is it ageism (why train a very experienced COBOL procedural programmer to do Object Orientation because you can get a young kid cheaper from India?)
As for new technologies- why not see what past behavior has done, and hire the guy who may not have the very latest languages on his list, but 40-50 older languages spaning all 8 main methodologies on his list? That is the guy who can learn a new technology with a keyword manual and a weekend....
And on your second posting, it's a good point if you consider analytical thinking something that can only be done above a certain IQ or inborn talent.
I however, do not. Intelectually we're born with only one instinct: to learn. Analytical or concrete thinking is nurture, not nature- and if you want more of it you're going to have to pay the social and monetary price to get more of it. Avoiding that cost by going global for cheap labor is only going to insure you'll get less of the type of thinker you want in the future- because you will denegrate the entire industry in the eyes of the ambitious.
That line was mainly to point out that he might not have the most unbiased idea on what is American; and most certainly has forgotten what her people were into 60 years ago if he thinks that is a culture we need in the melting pot. Racism demands racism in return.
And I'd even believe that line (Heck, did believe it) until I started meeting MBE students with 5, 10, or even 20 years out of college in the industry who had been pegionholed as a Cobol programmer, and then gotten dumped for an H-1b instead of the company actually providing traing in newer technologies. I've known far too many American Software Engineers who ended up homeless during the last recession to believe this line of garbage. Near as I can tell, grad schools have become racist against White Americans, and HR departments doubly so, due to this myth.
Either? Anyway, VC's play with their own money or money handed to them voluntarily for that purpose.
And in Acts Chapters 4 and 5, how does this differ from the communistic example of the Apostles (that Marx based his model of communism upon)?
Under marxism people are forced to pay up or be marched off into exile.
No, that's under LENINISM. Under Marxism, people are taxed in accordance with a democratic vote of the majority that aimes to equalize compensation for work done.
Sorry, these robots would not even get invented under a marxist system. There obviously arent enough expertise or people to build these highly efficient robots because instead we're doing the close equivalent which is trade.
How so? Marxism would indicate that education is provided for by the government equally to all (Leninism is only equally to party members, in case you're getting mixed up). Expertise comes from education.
By the way, doesnt using robots take away jobs the same as outsourcing? Oh i guess it doesn't meet the other aspect of your agenda.
My "agenda" is really about businesses acting like citizens rather than feifdoms. But I guess that doesn't fit YOUR agenda of having indentured servants available instead of free citizens.
Since you obviously either found some anomalies or are misrepresenting reality I went ahead and used the capitalist tool google and found:
Dispite that propaganda- I've yet to see significant price increases at Wal*Mart or any other discount retailer. Until the cost of an etch-a-sketch goes back up to the $24.95 it was in 1998 before Ohio Arts outsourced, I rather doubt they're paying the factory workers the $9.95/hr that the union required.
Wealthier nations do have less kids, that's why many rich countries in europe (and also japan) have stable or negative population growth. Even the US is low population growth compared to the poorer countries in the world (and actually the per capita of rich people having kids is low).
That's due to pollution and lowered fertility rates, not wealth- in other words, a lower standard of living, not a higher one.
They don't they want give out more in loans than the assets they have.
They shouldn't be taking in assets in the first place, as they add no value to their hoarding of resources and cost society more than they are worth.
They won't give out a loan if they feel a person won't work pay it back. Why should they hand out money that people who do work produced?
They shouldn't even HAVE money that people who do real work produced.
Marxism has never worked.
Actually, Marx based his system on the Rule of St. Benedict and Acts chapters 3 and 4- of which there have been working communites for more than 1500 years now.
It has always been corrupted into the crapper.
No, you're thinking of Leninism again- which twisted Marxism by giving more to party members than to farmers, and under Stalin caused the Ukranian Famine.
Now u may claim all sorts of things about implementation and dictators or whatever. But ultimately marxism is a set of unrealistic promises for getting elected or grabbing power.
Not originally- but then again, Marx's big mistake was trying to use it for communities of more than 500 individuals, kind of like democracy itself (which was the original form of government for Marxism).
Capitalism and free trade has worked.
Then why are Mexicans now paying 1/3rd of their income for corn flour, and why are all the farmers coming here as illegal imigrants since American Socialism in the form of subsidies kicked them out of the free trade market?
In spite of multiple attempts at isolation by various nations (including the US) why is there no rich country in existence today that does not engage in trade?
Because rich isn't everything. In fact, it's only idolatry.
If a qualification is "minimum five years experience... " and the applicant has zero years experience, it would take how many years of "training" before the applicant is qualified?
Five usually- but qualifications based on years of experience in a technology that hasn't existed for an equal or greater number of years are usually bogus requirements anyway- businesses use them to get LCAs for H-1b visas past an incompetant Department of Labor. I'm not fooled- and neither should you be.
As a hiring manager/Software Engineer, I can find plenty of coders. I can even get them cheap (less than $15/hour in India and less then $20/hour in Argentina). However I can't find a good Engineer. I typically have to work the social networks to find someone who knows someone good to steal from another company.
Have you tried offering 4-year scholarships to the winners of high science fairs? Seems to me that would be a heck of a lot more reliable than social networks, where other managers lie to you to offload their deadwood.
I've met plenty of folks that can code an algorithm when given one, but couldn't for the life of them come up with the algorithm on their own. Abstract things like design and problem decomposition require people that can think abstractly. That is a talent. Even if you got the talent, you have to want to use it.
Funny- I wasn't hired out of college by Microsoft for exactly that talent. The interviewer told me to code Mod 2 in assembly, and expected the textbook answer of Logical Shift Right- a single instruction. I coded Mod N using an algorithim I made up in the 8th grade- with an additional instruction moving 2 into a register for N- and failed the interview because I didn't use the textbook algorithm. I failed the interview, naturally- but certainly demonstrated that exact talent and a willingness to use it.
You can't teach talent or desire.
But far more people have that talent, AND the desire, than you seem to be giving credit for.
The answer is simple: You can't train to increase IQ. There is a difference between skills and the upper limit on a persons capabilities. You can teach skills up to that capability limit, but it is unlikely (aka risky) to bet you can increase the limit. Taken to the extreme, would it be reasonable to expect any company to hire any worker and train them into any job? Of course not - the cost and risk would be prohibitive.
At least 40% of the population can be trained to do any job. 110 IQ is plenty for just about any job on the planet. The very meaning of IQ means that for any average job, half the population will be able to do it.
So instead of looking for the best talent globally, a company should *pay* for a worker who may not have the inclination or drive to master his profession?
If they like their freedom that lets them be in business to begin with, yes. If they'd rather have to spend their money on "security systems" to keep out the rabble outside of the gate, you're more correct. It's a matter of loyalty to the country that gave you the opportunity to begin with than anything else.
I'm no Republican, but if that's not the road to a stagnant country where entitlements are expected then I don't know what is.
It's only in the last 50 years that entitlements have NOT been expected- entitlements such as a stable money supply, military protection, and providing an environment fo the common welfare are a part of the US Constitution.
My girlfriend is on an h1b for architecture; she's from Japan. She's also the hardest, most driven worker her company has, and they offered her ridiculous amounts of money (for architecture) during her review because she's such an asset. They didn't hire her because she's cheaper, they hired her because she's good.
So for your lust, an American should be thrown out on the street?
I can't think of a faster way to torpedo the American character than the parent's idea.
I can't think of a faster way to destroy the American culture than to marry a jap.
I think it's because not everyone is a Marxist with other people's money to play with.
Venture Capitalists have a tendency to fit that mold as well, don't forget. Plus, what is more important to do with profits? Dividends for stockholders or growing your business?
Also, how many workers do you think he US has? Do you think there are enough to supply everyone with all the crap we have? Hundreds of TV channels (ok a lot of the programming sucks), more diverse musical assortment (a lot of which may suck to each perspective), cell phones, computers, increased per capita ownership of cars, increased per capita ownership of TV's etc.
The majority of those could be hobbies rather than jobs, the rest can be better done by robots.
Let's be honest, everyone who wants a job can get one.. yeah maybe labor intensive factory jobs are harder to find.
And labor intensive programming jobs since the.bomb failure, which is presumably why we're bothered by H-1bs to begin with.
Now a lesson in capitalism, grab your notebook and think analytically (don't worry i'll leave out comparative advantage concepts that your brain may not understand):
No, I understand comparative advantage- and consider it a complete myth.
Cheaper workers = rich business owners putting more money in financial institutions
Financial institutions don't need the money
more money in financial institutions = more loans for building homes, buying cars, and other activities that create jobs
Which would be better paid for in cash anyway, since loans is just usury (paying financial institutions for no value added).
more activities = more people who will harvest energy (eventually fusion?), mine/recycle for raw material (earth is 1/12 iron), and build crap and utilize things to improve their quality of life by providing and purchasing services
Which is what causes global warming- so far you're negative.
happier people with more services = improved quality of life
If burning up oxygen to create unbreathable CO2 and acid oceans is an improved quality of life to you, then I for one don't want to share my planet with you.
Yes it means that as the number of services and products increases more workers will be needed resulting in worker shortages (as is happening to factories in china). These competing factories are being forced to pay higher and higher wages in order to prevent workers from leaving for better jobs.
Once everyone is rich, maybe we'll need robots to do the work.
Then why is the minimum wage in China still $.34/hr? Why is the PRACTICAL minimum wage paid in the Ohio Arts factory in China $.24/hr?
Of course unfortunately this may cause a population decline because wealthier peoples have less kids.
Why should they, when this all assumes "infinite potential" rather than a "zero-cost" economy (in other words a pipe dream that doesn't exist)?
This is different than the anti human nature marxist approach with is based on doling out fixed resources resulting in people fighting to hoard up and control the resources leaving nearly everyone in a state of poverty.
If marxism encourages hoarding of resources, why is it that banks hoard money?
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Java's virtual machine, for the first several revisions, sucked ass and ran extremely slowly, cutting the general user experience on a Pentium I 100Mhz machine down to that of Windows 2.0 on a 80286 runing at 14 Mhz. If it wasn't for that, I would have probably been a lot more serious persuing Java as a "language I should learn".
Ok, I'd like to specifically address this one, as my nephew (and perhaps myself, I'm almost afraid to find out due to the horrific nature of what heavy metal detox involves, but it's worth it in his case because he's only 6 and stands a half of a chance at a more normal childhood, where I'm 30 and rather set in my peculiar learned avoidance behaviors*) was misdiagnosed with Asperger's when it was really heavy metal poisoning, long after mercury had been removed from childhood vaccines.
He tested out 15 times the normal level of mercury- awfully strange given the fact he had *NO* mercury laced vaccinations.
But two items he did have in his life: Eating fish raised on a farm in Oregon (in the last year, the EPA has been unable to find any fish-bearing body of water in the entire Pacific Northwest that *didn't* have detectable levels of mercury in the fish), and an early-life operation that required him to take very strong antibiotics. The theory goes that this killed off the bacteria in his gut that helps human beings sublimate mercury (as well as digest gluten and casin) and sure enough, he began to respond to a GFCF diet. He's now on a much more strict diet (it reminds me of the Atkins diet, suplemented with extra stuff to avoid sources of mercury) combined with Chelation Therapy and antibiotic/probiotic therapy to kill off the bad bacteria that has colonized his digestive tract and replace it with the good stuff. HOPEFULLY, by his 9th birthday, he'll get to have an angelfood cake again, AND be basically cured of his autism.
---------------
* One thing I'm afraid of losing is the ability to hunker down and concentrate on a single programming problem with a lack of need of further input from the customer. I appreciate this autistic behavior in that it's how I make a living.
Never specialize. That's a lesson I learned early on and it's one that turned me out of IT and into a field where there is no need to specialize to go far. Specializing gets you pigeon-holed, and pigeon holes are eventually closed off for being obsolete.
That is the most brilliant point I've seen in this thread. It's both completely true and completely false at the same time! True in that this is the manager's point of view, and anybody ambitious enough to become a manager SHOULD follow this advice. False in that anybody with even a Bachelor's degree of Software Engineering was probably exposed to an average of 4 languages per term (either semester or quad, depending on the school) and knows how to learn a new language in a weekend. Congradulations on identifying the main problem with HR people hiring technologists, and doing something to get yourself out of the rat race to become obsolete!
Yes, in the good old slavery days, you could do that, because you ownder a person. Unfortunately, these days, people look down on owning people, so it is a bit tricky. So it is a bit economically unfeasable to pour all this money into someone, who can just leave anytime they want. Maybe you can stop posting this crap to every story now.
You have to give loyalty to get loyalty. Treat people right, instead of as resources to just throw away when they become "unprofitable" and maybe they won't leave at the drop of a hat. Instead of supporting right-to-fire laws in right-to-work states, try actually signing mutually beneficial *contracts* and following them instead of breaking them. Instead of just throwing people onto unemployment- and cutting off their health care- keep three years of their salary in the bank and run your own employment agency if you need to lay people off. There is a LOT that can be done to change that situation.
Well if racism demands racism here is my contribution "Europeans go home" What are white skinned people doing on this continent anyway? Asia is a lot closer to America than Europe is. Why dont these European squatters just go home.
YEAH! Somebody understands!
How does that feel and if you happen to be black same goes for Africans too.
I actually completely agree. I'm enough of a mixed breed to have Native American ancestors- including distant cousins who in the 1830s mainly died off of a mysterious MALARIA outbreak in OREGON (If you think THAT was natural and not "humor" based microbe warfare, then there's a bridge I want to sell you on the Columbia that hasn't been built yet). Cascadia for Cascadians- the return of the Kwakiutal First Nation- would be a reasonable thing to me.
Just because you are a frustated out of work bum doesnt give you the right to insult others.
Actually, I haven't been out of work since 2003.
America is all about mixing many cultures and intermarriage between different nationalities is what makes America so great.
Maybe to you- but I'm tired of cleaning grafitti in languages I don't understand (mainly Sanskrit or Spanish, due to the high class and low class immigrants we get in the area) off of my fence.
If you want to be insular and propagate the master race I have news for you buddy . Your master Hitler had his go at it and failed. You are 50 years too late. Now go jump off a bridge or something.
Ah, too bad- I thought you started out so well- this isn't about RACE. It's about CULTURE.
Training on specific skills is the easiest thing to fix. What is hard is to find quality people, who will invest in the work, take pride in what they do, be able to communicate and collaborate with others, have a positive attitude, etc.
Actually, that's pretty easy to fix too- but the problem is our entire economy is against fixing it. I went from having a postive attitude about my programming to a negative one when I was told point blank by a PHB that any project that didn't show a profit on the next quarter's bottom line would be axed. In fact, to make sure that ALL projects that lived more than two quarters were profitable, the real deadline for time to market would be 4 months.
If you are never allowed to complete a project, it's kind of hard to take pride in what you do.
This one is kind of outdated, it represents the state I was in at the end of 2003, when I finally decided resumes don't do anybody any good. I went a different tack- I spent the next 2.5 years triming outdated skills off of this already-trimed resume, and contracting for the State. When somebody retired out of my department, I applied for his position, and have just finished 6 months of trial service. The pay is worse, but the benefits are better, and it fits my new goal of never being without health insurance ever again (having a kid with Cerebral Palsy makes that a priority).
Based on your apparent assumptions, I think that you've illustrated exactly what I am _not_ looking to in a new hire. You assumed that we're looking for people with a fixed well defined skill, when the purpose of that inteview question is precisely the opposite.
Then you should choose something much more challenging- perhaps a double pass n-item bubble sort?
When we ask interviewees to average an array of integers, we are not simply testing for a simple skill; if somebody simply recites something they've learned at ITT tech or out of a book without much insight, we probably won't hire them. We look for people to anticipate unknowns; for example overflow issues. We look for people to ask questions like "Will this be used in a financial system? That will determine whether we should use floating point or not" or "Should we use error codes or exceptions". The best candidates are the ones that come up with responses that I did not anticipate. People have to be able to handle open ended problems.
What you don't seem to understand is that just about anybody with a 105 IQ or better can handle open ended problems- and asking them about an obviously closed problem like averaging an array of numbers just ain't going to get you where you want to go.
IT is not about teaching people to average arrays of integers and then having them do that, like you would a burger flipper, a welder, or a worker on a car assembly line. Its about being in undefined situations, readily adapting to things that nobody has anticipated. In my line of work, there is simply no way that I could simply train people to do that on the job - my hands are full adapting to new stuff every day without having to hold people's hand. At my current place, they are growing and they tried "lowering the bar" to less talented people. It turned out to be a disaster as they required too much handholding, and the talented people invariably had to go back and clean everything up. So they decided instead to keep the bar high and pay the few qualified candidates a boatload.
Then don't try to train it on the job. Try something NOVEL like giving up profit for a couple of quarters to get a work force that works.
People that you describe simply have no problem finding jobs, as those are precisely the sorts of people that get hired nowadays., and have recruiters breathing down their necks all of the times. That ability trumps fancy buzzwords on resumes. If you know of any in greater Boston, let me know.
That is me on the other coast- the last time I had a call from a RECRUITER was 2003. For such people in greater Boston, I'd point you towards the Programmer's Guild- there are lots of people there who were replaced by H-1bs all over the nation.
Men, apparently, need not apply- these specific behaviors are female symptoms mostly. I wonder, though- is this the cause of the difference between heavy metal poisoning causing autism and genetics causing autism?
From TFA: * Rett Syndrome (RTT) is a severe childhood neurological disorder, diagnosed almost exclusively in girls. The most physically disabling of the autism spectrum disorders, RTT strikes at random, affecting an estimated 1 in every 10,000 females.
* First symptoms usually appear between 6 to 18 months of age. Development slows or begins to regress. Children at this stage may exhibit the social withdrawal often seen in autism, or cry inconsolably for months as previously acquired language and motor skills disappear. In classic RTT, this regression is accompanied by the onset of constant, compulsive hand wringing and the loss of all functional hand use. The progression of symptoms varies across the RTT spectrum. Many children become wheelchair bound; those who walk display an abnormal stiff-legged gait.
* As the disease progresses, abnormal voluntary and involuntary movements reflect increasing neurological deficits. The children suffer apraxia, the inability to organize voluntary movement. Parkinson-like tremors are common, as are disordered breathing patterns and problems with chewing and swallowing. Some children require feeding tubes or supplementary oxygen. Abnormal brain wave patterns are present in RTT; a percentage of the children experience seizures.
* The only autism spectrum disorder with a known genetic cause, RTT results from mutations in the gene MECP2. This gene was first discovered by Adrian Bird, Ph.D in 1990. MECP2 regulates the expression of other genes by turning them off at the appropriate time.
* Mutations in MECP2 were identified as the cause of RTT in 1999 in the lab of Huda Zoghbi, M.D. MECP2 mutations are now being seen in some cases of childhood schizophrenia, classic autism and learning disabilities.
This isn't about hammering nails into wood. There are plenty of people with ".NET experience". Many of the unqualified people have CS degrees as well as additional training (e.g. MCSD). You can have all the training in the world but still lack the aptitude, creativity, and initiative required for many jobs.
And you can have all the training, aptitude, creativity, and initiative required for those jobs and still get your resume round filed for somebody who assumes Americans can't do math (an attitude put forth repeatedly by H-1b supporters).
Then it's a good thing it got downmoded, isn't it? For the real explaination of why I went racist on purpose, see either my reply to the other guy, or better yet click on my new sig and try to decide for yourself if all cultures can fit in the melting pot.
The people that have not been rehired after the .com crash are the people that never belonged in IT.
.com crash and went into a different industry to survive.
.com crash is that it weeded out (at least some) of the drudge out of the IT profession.
AND the people who were thrown out in the street after the
Today, the biggest problem is finding qualified people; where I work there is such a recruiting effort that people get $1500 bonuses for every hire.
Then the people doing the hiring are incompetant- such people are available in every IT union in the country, from Washtech to the Programmer's Guild.
Of course, that doesn't mean that the dumb people have not been fully flushed out yet - you would be surprised at how many people show up for an interview and cannot write a function to average an array of integers. You cannot simply train people for IT; you either have it or you don't. If you could train people for IT, companies would invest in training programs rather than hire highly paid people to develop recruiting programs and paying boatloads of money for referrals.
It's exactly that bigotry that I find incomprehensible. I can train just about any hobo to write a function to average an array of integers.
The best thing about the
And the worst thing about it is that it wasn't that selective- and ended up discouraging kids from entering the field at all as they watched their parents, aunts, and uncles turn to truck driving and other certificate-based employment to survive.
Then why are you replacing the rather large unemployed pool of talented people out there with H-1bs? Is it racism (you assume that just because they worked for a .com, or were born in America, that they're not worth interviewing?) Or is it ageism (why train a very experienced COBOL procedural programmer to do Object Orientation because you can get a young kid cheaper from India?)
As for new technologies- why not see what past behavior has done, and hire the guy who may not have the very latest languages on his list, but 40-50 older languages spaning all 8 main methodologies on his list? That is the guy who can learn a new technology with a keyword manual and a weekend....
And on your second posting, it's a good point if you consider analytical thinking something that can only be done above a certain IQ or inborn talent.
I however, do not. Intelectually we're born with only one instinct: to learn. Analytical or concrete thinking is nurture, not nature- and if you want more of it you're going to have to pay the social and monetary price to get more of it. Avoiding that cost by going global for cheap labor is only going to insure you'll get less of the type of thinker you want in the future- because you will denegrate the entire industry in the eyes of the ambitious.
That line was mainly to point out that he might not have the most unbiased idea on what is American; and most certainly has forgotten what her people were into 60 years ago if he thinks that is a culture we need in the melting pot. Racism demands racism in return.
No. You wasn't hired by Microsoft because the guy that interviewed you should not have been interviewing you.
.com crash.
It's who they sent to campus- from that moment on I have not believed that Microsoft wants people who can make up their own algorithims.
Where are all of these talented people then?
The majority of them retrained to drive trucks after being evicted out of their homes in the
And I'd even believe that line (Heck, did believe it) until I started meeting MBE students with 5, 10, or even 20 years out of college in the industry who had been pegionholed as a Cobol programmer, and then gotten dumped for an H-1b instead of the company actually providing traing in newer technologies. I've known far too many American Software Engineers who ended up homeless during the last recession to believe this line of garbage. Near as I can tell, grad schools have become racist against White Americans, and HR departments doubly so, due to this myth.
Either? Anyway, VC's play with their own money or money handed to them voluntarily for that purpose.
And in Acts Chapters 4 and 5, how does this differ from the communistic example of the Apostles (that Marx based his model of communism upon)?
Under marxism people are forced to pay up or be marched off into exile.
No, that's under LENINISM. Under Marxism, people are taxed in accordance with a democratic vote of the majority that aimes to equalize compensation for work done.
Sorry, these robots would not even get invented under a marxist system. There obviously arent enough expertise or people to build these highly efficient robots because instead we're doing the close equivalent which is trade.
How so? Marxism would indicate that education is provided for by the government equally to all (Leninism is only equally to party members, in case you're getting mixed up). Expertise comes from education.
By the way, doesnt using robots take away jobs the same as outsourcing? Oh i guess it doesn't meet the other aspect of your agenda.
My "agenda" is really about businesses acting like citizens rather than feifdoms. But I guess that doesn't fit YOUR agenda of having indentured servants available instead of free citizens.
Since you obviously either found some anomalies or are misrepresenting reality I went ahead and used the capitalist tool google and found:
Dispite that propaganda- I've yet to see significant price increases at Wal*Mart or any other discount retailer. Until the cost of an etch-a-sketch goes back up to the $24.95 it was in 1998 before Ohio Arts outsourced, I rather doubt they're paying the factory workers the $9.95/hr that the union required.
Wealthier nations do have less kids, that's why many rich countries in europe (and also japan) have stable or negative population growth. Even the US is low population growth compared to the poorer countries in the world (and actually the per capita of rich people having kids is low).
That's due to pollution and lowered fertility rates, not wealth- in other words, a lower standard of living, not a higher one.
They don't they want give out more in loans than the assets they have.
They shouldn't be taking in assets in the first place, as they add no value to their hoarding of resources and cost society more than they are worth.
They won't give out a loan if they feel a person won't work pay it back. Why should they hand out money that people who do work produced?
They shouldn't even HAVE money that people who do real work produced.
Marxism has never worked.
Actually, Marx based his system on the Rule of St. Benedict and Acts chapters 3 and 4- of which there have been working communites for more than 1500 years now.
It has always been corrupted into the crapper.
No, you're thinking of Leninism again- which twisted Marxism by giving more to party members than to farmers, and under Stalin caused the Ukranian Famine.
Now u may claim all sorts of things about implementation and dictators or whatever. But ultimately marxism is a set of unrealistic promises for getting elected or grabbing power.
Not originally- but then again, Marx's big mistake was trying to use it for communities of more than 500 individuals, kind of like democracy itself (which was the original form of government for Marxism).
Capitalism and free trade has worked.
Then why are Mexicans now paying 1/3rd of their income for corn flour, and why are all the farmers coming here as illegal imigrants since American Socialism in the form of subsidies kicked them out of the free trade market?
In spite of multiple attempts at isolation by various nations (including the US) why is there no rich country in existence today that does not engage in trade?
Because rich isn't everything. In fact, it's only idolatry.
Problem is, your competition eventually snatches people away, or they find the work they're doing unsatisfying.
Pay them the same $100,000 a year that you're paying the H-1b, and that won't be a problem.
If a qualification is "minimum five years experience ... " and the applicant has zero years experience, it would take how many years of "training" before the applicant is qualified?
Five usually- but qualifications based on years of experience in a technology that hasn't existed for an equal or greater number of years are usually bogus requirements anyway- businesses use them to get LCAs for H-1b visas past an incompetant Department of Labor. I'm not fooled- and neither should you be.
As a hiring manager/Software Engineer, I can find plenty of coders. I can even get them cheap (less than $15/hour in India and less then $20/hour in Argentina). However I can't find a good Engineer. I typically have to work the social networks to find someone who knows someone good to steal from another company.
Have you tried offering 4-year scholarships to the winners of high science fairs? Seems to me that would be a heck of a lot more reliable than social networks, where other managers lie to you to offload their deadwood.
I've met plenty of folks that can code an algorithm when given one, but couldn't for the life of them come up with the algorithm on their own. Abstract things like design and problem decomposition require people that can think abstractly. That is a talent. Even if you got the talent, you have to want to use it.
Funny- I wasn't hired out of college by Microsoft for exactly that talent. The interviewer told me to code Mod 2 in assembly, and expected the textbook answer of Logical Shift Right- a single instruction. I coded Mod N using an algorithim I made up in the 8th grade- with an additional instruction moving 2 into a register for N- and failed the interview because I didn't use the textbook algorithm. I failed the interview, naturally- but certainly demonstrated that exact talent and a willingness to use it.
You can't teach talent or desire.
But far more people have that talent, AND the desire, than you seem to be giving credit for.
The answer is simple: You can't train to increase IQ. There is a difference between skills and the upper limit on a persons capabilities. You can teach skills up to that capability limit, but it is unlikely (aka risky) to bet you can increase the limit. Taken to the extreme, would it be reasonable to expect any company to hire any worker and train them into any job? Of course not - the cost and risk would be prohibitive.
At least 40% of the population can be trained to do any job. 110 IQ is plenty for just about any job on the planet. The very meaning of IQ means that for any average job, half the population will be able to do it.
What the hell?
Worshiping Profit is idolatry, not character.
So instead of looking for the best talent globally, a company should *pay* for a worker who may not have the inclination or drive to master his profession?
If they like their freedom that lets them be in business to begin with, yes. If they'd rather have to spend their money on "security systems" to keep out the rabble outside of the gate, you're more correct. It's a matter of loyalty to the country that gave you the opportunity to begin with than anything else.
I'm no Republican, but if that's not the road to a stagnant country where entitlements are expected then I don't know what is.
It's only in the last 50 years that entitlements have NOT been expected- entitlements such as a stable money supply, military protection, and providing an environment fo the common welfare are a part of the US Constitution.
My girlfriend is on an h1b for architecture; she's from Japan. She's also the hardest, most driven worker her company has, and they offered her ridiculous amounts of money (for architecture) during her review because she's such an asset. They didn't hire her because she's cheaper, they hired her because she's good.
So for your lust, an American should be thrown out on the street?
I can't think of a faster way to torpedo the American character than the parent's idea.
I can't think of a faster way to destroy the American culture than to marry a jap.
I think it's because not everyone is a Marxist with other people's money to play with.
.. yeah maybe labor intensive factory jobs are harder to find.
.bomb failure, which is presumably why we're bothered by H-1bs to begin with.
Venture Capitalists have a tendency to fit that mold as well, don't forget. Plus, what is more important to do with profits? Dividends for stockholders or growing your business?
Also, how many workers do you think he US has? Do you think there are enough to supply everyone with all the crap we have? Hundreds of TV channels (ok a lot of the programming sucks), more diverse musical assortment (a lot of which may suck to each perspective), cell phones, computers, increased per capita ownership of cars, increased per capita ownership of TV's etc.
The majority of those could be hobbies rather than jobs, the rest can be better done by robots.
Let's be honest, everyone who wants a job can get one
And labor intensive programming jobs since the
Now a lesson in capitalism, grab your notebook and think analytically (don't worry i'll leave out comparative advantage concepts that your brain may not understand):
No, I understand comparative advantage- and consider it a complete myth.
Cheaper workers = rich business owners putting more money in financial institutions
Financial institutions don't need the money
more money in financial institutions = more loans for building homes, buying cars, and other activities that create jobs
Which would be better paid for in cash anyway, since loans is just usury (paying financial institutions for no value added).
more activities = more people who will harvest energy (eventually fusion?), mine/recycle for raw material (earth is 1/12 iron), and build crap and utilize things to improve their quality of life by providing and purchasing services
Which is what causes global warming- so far you're negative.
happier people with more services = improved quality of life
If burning up oxygen to create unbreathable CO2 and acid oceans is an improved quality of life to you, then I for one don't want to share my planet with you.
Yes it means that as the number of services and products increases more workers will be needed resulting in worker shortages (as is happening to factories in china). These competing factories are being forced to pay higher and higher wages in order to prevent workers from leaving for better jobs. Once everyone is rich, maybe we'll need robots to do the work.
Then why is the minimum wage in China still $.34/hr? Why is the PRACTICAL minimum wage paid in the Ohio Arts factory in China $.24/hr?
Of course unfortunately this may cause a population decline because wealthier peoples have less kids.
Why should they, when this all assumes "infinite potential" rather than a "zero-cost" economy (in other words a pipe dream that doesn't exist)?
This is different than the anti human nature marxist approach with is based on doling out fixed resources resulting in people fighting to hoard up and control the resources leaving nearly everyone in a state of poverty.
If marxism encourages hoarding of resources, why is it that banks hoard money?