That's been my experience with engineering in general, one giant intellectual circle jerk. No one knows everything, humility is a virtue. But you'd like Real Ultimate Truth actually exists in the minds of a select few who are also tasked with rating and ranking the unwashed masses based on silly questions or agreement some groupthink.
The only competitive programming that matters is solve a problem no one else has solved. You have your whole life to do it, you may begin....wait for it....now.
Speak for yourself, NYC was fun for a few years, but I don't miss it. My living requirements are a nice, large house with the smallest possible mortgage. What's outside of my kingdom...I care not.
My fortune 1x company pays their offices by "economic zone". If they move you, they won't hit your salary (or boost it, unless they have to). But if you take the proverbial big promotion from low cost region to NYC, you'll get a raise, but be far underneath what others at your level who live there will make. The best move is the big promotion to low cost region, because they almost always give you a pathetic raise, but you keep your big city salary.
I think the best available game will define "the industry", as it always seems to (thus WoW, or any great game, is helping the industry).
The question is what do you really want? Lump sum payments tend to be more "take it or leave it" in terms of content, resources will be driven to the next project once the current one is delivered, and network resources (the real $$$ behind monthly subscriptions) will be minimized as much as possible.
Monthly payments will encourage companies to make really long, drawn out level treadmills to keep victims coming back for more. They'll tend to force socialization to draw people in to other (cheap) aspects of the game, and try to do as little new development as they can to maintain the infrastructure.
In the end I think it's still more about the product than the business. People will pay a lot of money for something enjoyable, just look at the MMOG aftermarket. If someone makes a game that will cause the masses to kill their WoW subscription and move to the new game, how could they justify not charging any way they can?
The suit world will invariably ask the question, "Why give away something we could otherwise charge money for?" The only good answer is "to steal player base from the other game." Like many others, I discovered WoW in open beta, put down my EQ uberguilding nonsense and moved on. The free month hooked me for the box fee and the following subscription. I doubt anyone would change that model unless they knew their product was inferior and could not otherwise get some return on the development investment.
Holy shit, I think this guy actually sets the curriculum down here in Texas!
A parallel to the 2+2=5 theory was actually witnessed at the local Wendy's. I had the sheer NERVE to give the lady $5.44 for a $3.44 item, and got $3 back (after a long period of deliberation and muttering of "The register is broken"). She was reaching for the change drawer but I moved on to Window 2. I will have to live the rest of my life wondering what else she was going to give me in change.
That the PS3 will continue to get the good, interesting games, while the X-Box 360 will get the usual collection of crap they have been getting (Football, Basketball, Halo, Yet Another FPS 2006, etc.) that just race to see who can paste the most poly's to the screen every second.
We have all the rights except those explicitly denied, and those denied are subject to scrutiny by the justice system. If the government wants to pass a law, they can do so, but we should not tolerate anything less. Allowing non-laws to interfere with the lives of citizens is not even close to acceptable.
I won't question whether he is a self-righteous asshat, he probably is. In this case I think he was in the right. Further, if you or I pulled the same stunt we'd have just missed our flight (at our expense) and maybe spent a day in jail. We wouldn't have even made YRO on/. He raised a big enough stink to get noticed. The world needs people like him that use their fame (such as it is) to do the right thing.
The more asshats that resist, the less oppressive things will be.
Not sure if you're really the troll you're currently modded at, but I'll take Stallman's side on the airport thing. People need to stand up for their rights, even at the inconvenience of others or we lose the rights. While I would not have wanted to be behind him in the security line, I tend to agree with his actions.
If he's a pompous windbag, he's in good company in this, or any other industry.
Taking your statements for granted, all you have shown is that there is a correlation between IQ score and some success metric. It doesn't demonstrate causality (esp. for a given individual) and doesn't justify a physical link between IQ and potential.
All it says is people with high IQs do better by some chosen metric(s), in general, than people with low IQs - by design. The test itself may have value in that somehow it is measuring existing thought process. I cannot see how it measures potential (unless it is proven that ones thought processes are locked and unchanging, a theory I would resist without brutal proof).
How is that really useful then? It can't predict the future of an individual. It may or may not even be permanent. It just somehow has a correlation with success. I can see it has value to people trying to understand the brain, I can't see that it has social value, nor that it should be thrown about with such recklessness.
The only place I was going is that these are not signs of a tech shortage. If there was a tech shortage people would not fear for their jobs, but the other way around. Managers would be in a perpetual fear of losing valuable employees.
All your other points are valid if I squint just right. It's true there have always been jobs, and it's true you don't have to take a pay cut if you leave one job for another. But most of the opportunities I saw in the 2002-2003 were pretty high risk. OK for the young and nimble, but not a good time to move across country and buy a home for.
So, Google is a villain for improving the wages of technologists, and also retroactively (circa 2000) making it harder for startups to get funding?
That's certainly evil if you are an investor, they're behind the great outsourcing spree of Y2K. It's not evil to John Q. Public. (Now whether Google remains the free and helpful search engine we're used to, is still dubious)
But seriously, who in the hell seriously believes they've drained the market of talent? How many readers honestly do not know at least a dozen people who want to leave but cannot due to a poor job market or fear of a pay cut?
The job market still sucks, it's not as awful as it was a few years ago, but it's not good. People aren't going to float their resume's around until they're sure they won't put their existing job in jeopardy.
1) I didn't cheat, I work in large megacorps, they have the resources to check with my school and my references, and do. I overbooked classes to meet credit requirements starting as a bachelors. Anyone who takes 26 credits/semester is probably not getting everything out of the courses their taking, regardless of their grades. I was banking on the fact that it doesn't matter, it's all about the paper anyway. All I demonstrated was a capability of storing a lot of number facts in short term memory for brief regurgitation. Facts I have not needed again. The premium is paid for the APPEARANCE of my education and the apparent safety that comes along with it, not because I actually know anything. There is no question I wouldn't have gotten the jobs without the degree, but could I have do them without? Probably, I spend most of my day writing emails and correcting the mistakes of stupid (but degreed) people.
2) I guess I would rather found a company that become a monster, than be appointed to one. For one, it's a lot more profitable. Also, I can retain control of the board of directors. I won't argue that getting appointed CEO often requires a good pedigree, I will argue that it should not. The best CEO I've worked for had no degree and founded his company, the worst CEO I've worked for had a BA in marketing and was appointed. She had the credentials but not the clue.
3) My boss is smart, and there were people more paper qualified than he. I don't believe there was in fact someone actually more qualified or they would have hired the other person. The chance they took was he'd get lazy and not learn his job, NOT that he was poorly educated. His competitors had lots of spoon fed knowledege about marketing for sure, and would have been "safe" appointments from a CYA perspective. Clearly they did not exhibit any outward sign that they had brain activity or they would have been chosen instead.
4) The point is that in spite of being less well to do, Texans have an infinite amount of cheap labor in the form of mexicans and can get a lot of work done for next to nothing. Corporate executives have an infinite amount of cheap labor in the form of Indians and Chinese. Their qualifications, while apparently high, are in fact irrelevant. Who knows if their PhDs have any standards at all. Who cares? They're cheap, and they can use the PhD as an excuse to the US Gov't who may come asking questions about labor practices. "Oh Uncle Sam, there just aren't enough PhD's in the US! We have to use these nice Indians, there's no other choice!"
First, I never said without college, although a number of CEOs somehow managed to trump college degrees with common sense. But it follows from my argument that such an extropolation should also be valid and I stand by it. There are lots of successful non-degree holders out there, although it's getting harder even for smart people to "break in".
Second, I have a masters in EE. It cost me 6 additional months (due to careful planning and some strong arming of school policies) and netted $20k/yr. What's wrong with that is that it shouldn't have happened. I only did it to work the system, I had no interest in being in school or what I was learning. I spent that extra semester re-interviewing, this time featuring MS on my resume. College is breadth first, with each degree indicating a higher degree of specialization. A PhD is only an indicator of deep specialization. Do companies really want that specialization, or the feeling of safety and security that comes from having someone with some more letters after his name? Stay tuned.
Third, the MBA. I know only one thing about an MBA: from the right school it's worth a whole lot of money, from the other schools, not a dime. I started a MBA, and dropped it when my first company started to tank. Why? The first crew to go were not the factory workers, nor the engineers, nor even the secretaries. The first to go where the MBAs in our finance, and program management groups. Is it necessary? I think not. In addition to the CEOs mentioned above, my former boss with his BS in EE somehow is a marketing director, with no formal training. In about 6 months he went from some small group in charge of an obscure portion of the world, to the second most popular market for my company (north america, sadly). Somehow common sense took him to where he needed to be, he's clearly not paper qualified for that job. He didn't even take economics as an elective! The hardest part was getting into that spot, without the paperwork. From there he seemed to move fast. Beyond what are often electives for engineers and useless liberal arts reqs, there is almost no similarity of degree programs between business majors and engineers.
Forth, there are probably jobs in which PhD/MS degrees in the appropriate specialization are essential. They need people actively involved in research in certain areas to come up with new, unheard of solutions. Such companies are willing to take product risks on unproven work. In the drug world, those companies are often big. In the engineering world, it's usually the opposite. I have only worked in megacorps, and never worked in one in which a novel, unproven, yet elegant approach was allowed. By design, such approaches are unproven and may meet with unexpected field issues and result in an expensive recall or factory problem. Then why do these guys even want MS/PhD types? Won't those guys be horribly bored? The answer is yes, but I put such creative energies to private usage. What large megacorps actually want is the warm-fuzzy of having an "elite" engineering team. The interesting issue here, is that the companies most able to outsource, are...you guessed it, large megacorps! They can buy foreign PhDs (who really just want work) by the boatload. The small researchy start-ups have a harder time outsourcing and tend to use local labor. These are the guys who NEED specialization and live or die on new ideas, yet they seem to catch their limit.
So in a giant circle, we're back to the issue at hand: is the motivation for such elitism the quality of employee, or the amount he is paid? I believe it's the latter. Does a given company know the credentials of every employee at Wipro, or the academic integrity of the overseas institutions which grant the individual laborers their degrees? Of course not. They're cheap, there are lots of them and they can satisfy the minimum job requirement. If it was specialization corporations wanted, overseas is probably the wrong place to look, as it's hard to figure out who is f
A number of those "accidents" are suicides or attempted suicides. You would be amazed at how many people try to kill themselves by jumping in front of a train.
FYI, to those feeling the need to self nominate: a train is neither guaranteed death, nor instant, nor painless. Find another way.
It's the "bullet list compatibility" problem combined with maybe a bit of degree inflation that some managers are too stupid or too afraid to see through.
Problem 1) I am a manager of a PC server development project. I need to hire someone to design critical circuit boards for this project. Do I a) interview candidates whose backgrounds seem related to my goal, and hire the person who seems most motivated b) Search the resume for compliance with the tools and technologies I use, and only interview the remainder c) Decide that since this is a Sr. job, only PhD candidates will do (and then, maybe, apply B as well)?
Problem 2)I am a manager or director of an R&D group for a company that is not primarily R&D based (say, a bank). I need to hire to meet my project deadlines. Additionally my management has been dissatisfied that my projects are always late, over budget, buggy and maybe don't like how my employees dress, act or the times of day they work. I know, from having worked on similar projects in the past, that I am meeting or exceeding the averages other managers are at. I've played games to make my numbers seem better, but am still failing to bridge the "suit gap". Competance of my staff is always in question. Do I a) interview all persons whose background matches my goals, and hire the best/most interested person b) Hire someone who fits identically to the bullet list of precise skills I gave HR c) Only consider PhD or MS level candidates as they add "weight" to my staff (though they may be very dissatisfied/overqualified with the work)?
It seems b & c are the choices being made (primarily in large corps), and the answers SEEM to lie in China or India because the education process in those places seems (b/c I work with those shops daily) are tool oriented more than theory oriented, and PhDs are sought with far greater vigor due to some cultural differences in how degrees are viewed.
To put it in better perspective, would someone hire a guy into marketing because he seems to be very motivated, because he knows how to use Power Point, or because he has an MBA (assuming PhD's in marketing are silly ideas). Ideally of course, we'd like all 3, but do we immediately look overseas because of a lack of people who have all 3? Is it really NECESSARY, or just an indicator that the person is on the ball? Could not one learn MBA material on his own, quicky, with sufficient prior training?
I think most non-trolls on/. probably know the correct answer. So the issue boils down purely to "The dang foreigners are cheaper, and design jobs don't NEED to be in the US", which is an issue for government intervention. The opposite side is continued loss of technical competance. Let's face it, most people bright and motivated enough to endure EE/CS degrees are looking to cash in. Sure, they may LIKE it, but they may also like medicine, law, politics or business administration and can/will succeed in any of those places. In the end, unless we're very wealthy, we go to school to help us get a better job, and we work the job to put food on the table. What we do because we "enjoy it" can be done at home, after hours.
Most of the ill effects of patents would go away if they reduced the patent protection to only 5 years, and allowed no extensions. These days 5 years is plenty for even a small company to get to market and make some money on their invention.
Nowhere was it intended that by inventing one really great thing you could retire on it. Smart people need to be encouraged to invent more, not sit back and extort the globe.
I realize patent duration is something the US is not free to redefine without some disruption elsewhere, but we should at least use our bullyish instincts to do some good.
Engineers at my grade are required to file for 2 "company patents" per year as part of our yearly performance review. Not to get promoted, just to get an average rating.
US patents are not for us to pursue, that's a legal/business decision. We must simply supply the material, and the suits figure out where it goes. No one on/. would be shocked by the sheer crap that gets sent on.
It also says in our company code of conduct and in our IP accountability training, that we are not allowed to modify GPL code without VP permission. The reason is not that our VP is a soulless bastard, he's actually a very good engineer, it's that our shareholders are afraid that it "destroys the value" of our company. It's all tied into the new age of corporate accountability.
They're just not doing coding anymore because the money went away. You'll find them in banks or development middle management (managing the PhDs from India). Probably marginally happy, certainly wishing they drank more in school and got the easier MBA degree.
It's funny but I know some people in NYC who are well on their way to that. They obsess over the perfect match, and are dissapointed if any aspect of their relationship does not match Hollywood level passion/lust/perfection. Needless to say, they're pretty lonely people and getting more than a bit bitter.
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That's been my experience with engineering in general, one giant intellectual circle jerk. No one knows everything, humility is a virtue. But you'd like Real Ultimate Truth actually exists in the minds of a select few who are also tasked with rating and ranking the unwashed masses based on silly questions or agreement some groupthink.
The only competitive programming that matters is solve a problem no one else has solved. You have your whole life to do it, you may begin....wait for it....now.
Speak for yourself, NYC was fun for a few years, but I don't miss it. My living requirements are a nice, large house with the smallest possible mortgage. What's outside of my kingdom...I care not.
My fortune 1x company pays their offices by "economic zone". If they move you, they won't hit your salary (or boost it, unless they have to). But if you take the proverbial big promotion from low cost region to NYC, you'll get a raise, but be far underneath what others at your level who live there will make. The best move is the big promotion to low cost region, because they almost always give you a pathetic raise, but you keep your big city salary.
I think the best available game will define "the industry", as it always seems to (thus WoW, or any great game, is helping the industry).
The question is what do you really want? Lump sum payments tend to be more "take it or leave it" in terms of content, resources will be driven to the next project once the current one is delivered, and network resources (the real $$$ behind monthly subscriptions) will be minimized as much as possible.
Monthly payments will encourage companies to make really long, drawn out level treadmills to keep victims coming back for more. They'll tend to force socialization to draw people in to other (cheap) aspects of the game, and try to do as little new development as they can to maintain the infrastructure.
In the end I think it's still more about the product than the business. People will pay a lot of money for something enjoyable, just look at the MMOG aftermarket. If someone makes a game that will cause the masses to kill their WoW subscription and move to the new game, how could they justify not charging any way they can?
The suit world will invariably ask the question, "Why give away something we could otherwise charge money for?" The only good answer is "to steal player base from the other game." Like many others, I discovered WoW in open beta, put down my EQ uberguilding nonsense and moved on. The free month hooked me for the box fee and the following subscription. I doubt anyone would change that model unless they knew their product was inferior and could not otherwise get some return on the development investment.
Holy shit, I think this guy actually sets the curriculum down here in Texas!
A parallel to the 2+2=5 theory was actually witnessed at the local Wendy's. I had the sheer NERVE to give the lady $5.44 for a $3.44 item, and got $3 back (after a long period of deliberation and muttering of "The register is broken"). She was reaching for the change drawer but I moved on to Window 2. I will have to live the rest of my life wondering what else she was going to give me in change.
That the PS3 will continue to get the good, interesting games, while the X-Box 360 will get the usual collection of crap they have been getting (Football, Basketball, Halo, Yet Another FPS 2006, etc.) that just race to see who can paste the most poly's to the screen every second.
We have all the rights except those explicitly denied, and those denied are subject to scrutiny by the justice system. If the government wants to pass a law, they can do so, but we should not tolerate anything less. Allowing non-laws to interfere with the lives of citizens is not even close to acceptable.
/. He raised a big enough stink to get noticed. The world needs people like him that use their fame (such as it is) to do the right thing.
I won't question whether he is a self-righteous asshat, he probably is. In this case I think he was in the right. Further, if you or I pulled the same stunt we'd have just missed our flight (at our expense) and maybe spent a day in jail. We wouldn't have even made YRO on
The more asshats that resist, the less oppressive things will be.
Not sure if you're really the troll you're currently modded at, but I'll take Stallman's side on the airport thing. People need to stand up for their rights, even at the inconvenience of others or we lose the rights. While I would not have wanted to be behind him in the security line, I tend to agree with his actions.
If he's a pompous windbag, he's in good company in this, or any other industry.
Taking your statements for granted, all you have shown is that there is a correlation between IQ score and some success metric. It doesn't demonstrate causality (esp. for a given individual) and doesn't justify a physical link between IQ and potential.
All it says is people with high IQs do better by some chosen metric(s), in general, than people with low IQs - by design. The test itself may have value in that somehow it is measuring existing thought process. I cannot see how it measures potential (unless it is proven that ones thought processes are locked and unchanging, a theory I would resist without brutal proof).
How is that really useful then? It can't predict the future of an individual. It may or may not even be permanent. It just somehow has a correlation with success. I can see it has value to people trying to understand the brain, I can't see that it has social value, nor that it should be thrown about with such recklessness.
Of those if they did only one, #5 would fix their current problem.
The only place I was going is that these are not signs of a tech shortage. If there was a tech shortage people would not fear for their jobs, but the other way around. Managers would be in a perpetual fear of losing valuable employees.
All your other points are valid if I squint just right. It's true there have always been jobs, and it's true you don't have to take a pay cut if you leave one job for another. But most of the opportunities I saw in the 2002-2003 were pretty high risk. OK for the young and nimble, but not a good time to move across country and buy a home for.
Not taking out a full page ad in the newspaper that you're available is common sense.
Being afraid that your resume might get back to your boss who has to cut a few heads next month and wants easy choices? That's dependent on economics.
That's certainly evil if you are an investor, they're behind the great outsourcing spree of Y2K. It's not evil to John Q. Public. (Now whether Google remains the free and helpful search engine we're used to, is still dubious)
But seriously, who in the hell seriously believes they've drained the market of talent? How many readers honestly do not know at least a dozen people who want to leave but cannot due to a poor job market or fear of a pay cut?
The job market still sucks, it's not as awful as it was a few years ago, but it's not good. People aren't going to float their resume's around until they're sure they won't put their existing job in jeopardy.
1) I didn't cheat, I work in large megacorps, they have the resources to check with my school and my references, and do. I overbooked classes to meet credit requirements starting as a bachelors. Anyone who takes 26 credits/semester is probably not getting everything out of the courses their taking, regardless of their grades. I was banking on the fact that it doesn't matter, it's all about the paper anyway. All I demonstrated was a capability of storing a lot of number facts in short term memory for brief regurgitation. Facts I have not needed again. The premium is paid for the APPEARANCE of my education and the apparent safety that comes along with it, not because I actually know anything. There is no question I wouldn't have gotten the jobs without the degree, but could I have do them without? Probably, I spend most of my day writing emails and correcting the mistakes of stupid (but degreed) people.
2) I guess I would rather found a company that become a monster, than be appointed to one. For one, it's a lot more profitable. Also, I can retain control of the board of directors. I won't argue that getting appointed CEO often requires a good pedigree, I will argue that it should not. The best CEO I've worked for had no degree and founded his company, the worst CEO I've worked for had a BA in marketing and was appointed. She had the credentials but not the clue.
3) My boss is smart, and there were people more paper qualified than he. I don't believe there was in fact someone actually more qualified or they would have hired the other person. The chance they took was he'd get lazy and not learn his job, NOT that he was poorly educated. His competitors had lots of spoon fed knowledege about marketing for sure, and would have been "safe" appointments from a CYA perspective. Clearly they did not exhibit any outward sign that they had brain activity or they would have been chosen instead.
4) The point is that in spite of being less well to do, Texans have an infinite amount of cheap labor in the form of mexicans and can get a lot of work done for next to nothing. Corporate executives have an infinite amount of cheap labor in the form of Indians and Chinese. Their qualifications, while apparently high, are in fact irrelevant. Who knows if their PhDs have any standards at all. Who cares? They're cheap, and they can use the PhD as an excuse to the US Gov't who may come asking questions about labor practices. "Oh Uncle Sam, there just aren't enough PhD's in the US! We have to use these nice Indians, there's no other choice!"
I don't buy it, though it's not the point.
First, I never said without college, although a number of CEOs somehow managed to trump college degrees with common sense. But it follows from my argument that such an extropolation should also be valid and I stand by it. There are lots of successful non-degree holders out there, although it's getting harder even for smart people to "break in".
Second, I have a masters in EE. It cost me 6 additional months (due to careful planning and some strong arming of school policies) and netted $20k/yr. What's wrong with that is that it shouldn't have happened. I only did it to work the system, I had no interest in being in school or what I was learning. I spent that extra semester re-interviewing, this time featuring MS on my resume. College is breadth first, with each degree indicating a higher degree of specialization. A PhD is only an indicator of deep specialization. Do companies really want that specialization, or the feeling of safety and security that comes from having someone with some more letters after his name? Stay tuned.
Third, the MBA. I know only one thing about an MBA: from the right school it's worth a whole lot of money, from the other schools, not a dime. I started a MBA, and dropped it when my first company started to tank. Why? The first crew to go were not the factory workers, nor the engineers, nor even the secretaries. The first to go where the MBAs in our finance, and program management groups. Is it necessary? I think not. In addition to the CEOs mentioned above, my former boss with his BS in EE somehow is a marketing director, with no formal training. In about 6 months he went from some small group in charge of an obscure portion of the world, to the second most popular market for my company (north america, sadly). Somehow common sense took him to where he needed to be, he's clearly not paper qualified for that job. He didn't even take economics as an elective! The hardest part was getting into that spot, without the paperwork. From there he seemed to move fast. Beyond what are often electives for engineers and useless liberal arts reqs, there is almost no similarity of degree programs between business majors and engineers.
Forth, there are probably jobs in which PhD/MS degrees in the appropriate specialization are essential. They need people actively involved in research in certain areas to come up with new, unheard of solutions. Such companies are willing to take product risks on unproven work. In the drug world, those companies are often big. In the engineering world, it's usually the opposite. I have only worked in megacorps, and never worked in one in which a novel, unproven, yet elegant approach was allowed. By design, such approaches are unproven and may meet with unexpected field issues and result in an expensive recall or factory problem. Then why do these guys even want MS/PhD types? Won't those guys be horribly bored? The answer is yes, but I put such creative energies to private usage. What large megacorps actually want is the warm-fuzzy of having an "elite" engineering team. The interesting issue here, is that the companies most able to outsource, are...you guessed it, large megacorps! They can buy foreign PhDs (who really just want work) by the boatload. The small researchy start-ups have a harder time outsourcing and tend to use local labor. These are the guys who NEED specialization and live or die on new ideas, yet they seem to catch their limit.
So in a giant circle, we're back to the issue at hand: is the motivation for such elitism the quality of employee, or the amount he is paid? I believe it's the latter. Does a given company know the credentials of every employee at Wipro, or the academic integrity of the overseas institutions which grant the individual laborers their degrees? Of course not. They're cheap, there are lots of them and they can satisfy the minimum job requirement. If it was specialization corporations wanted, overseas is probably the wrong place to look, as it's hard to figure out who is f
A number of those "accidents" are suicides or attempted suicides. You would be amazed at how many people try to kill themselves by jumping in front of a train. FYI, to those feeling the need to self nominate: a train is neither guaranteed death, nor instant, nor painless. Find another way.
It's the "bullet list compatibility" problem combined with maybe a bit of degree inflation that some managers are too stupid or too afraid to see through.
/. probably know the correct answer. So the issue boils down purely to "The dang foreigners are cheaper, and design jobs don't NEED to be in the US", which is an issue for government intervention. The opposite side is continued loss of technical competance. Let's face it, most people bright and motivated enough to endure EE/CS degrees are looking to cash in. Sure, they may LIKE it, but they may also like medicine, law, politics or business administration and can/will succeed in any of those places. In the end, unless we're very wealthy, we go to school to help us get a better job, and we work the job to put food on the table. What we do because we "enjoy it" can be done at home, after hours.
Problem 1) I am a manager of a PC server development project. I need to hire someone to design critical circuit boards for this project. Do I a) interview candidates whose backgrounds seem related to my goal, and hire the person who seems most motivated b) Search the resume for compliance with the tools and technologies I use, and only interview the remainder c) Decide that since this is a Sr. job, only PhD candidates will do (and then, maybe, apply B as well)?
Problem 2)I am a manager or director of an R&D group for a company that is not primarily R&D based (say, a bank). I need to hire to meet my project deadlines. Additionally my management has been dissatisfied that my projects are always late, over budget, buggy and maybe don't like how my employees dress, act or the times of day they work. I know, from having worked on similar projects in the past, that I am meeting or exceeding the averages other managers are at. I've played games to make my numbers seem better, but am still failing to bridge the "suit gap". Competance of my staff is always in question. Do I a) interview all persons whose background matches my goals, and hire the best/most interested person b) Hire someone who fits identically to the bullet list of precise skills I gave HR c) Only consider PhD or MS level candidates as they add "weight" to my staff (though they may be very dissatisfied/overqualified with the work)?
It seems b & c are the choices being made (primarily in large corps), and the answers SEEM to lie in China or India because the education process in those places seems (b/c I work with those shops daily) are tool oriented more than theory oriented, and PhDs are sought with far greater vigor due to some cultural differences in how degrees are viewed.
To put it in better perspective, would someone hire a guy into marketing because he seems to be very motivated, because he knows how to use Power Point, or because he has an MBA (assuming PhD's in marketing are silly ideas). Ideally of course, we'd like all 3, but do we immediately look overseas because of a lack of people who have all 3? Is it really NECESSARY, or just an indicator that the person is on the ball? Could not one learn MBA material on his own, quicky, with sufficient prior training?
I think most non-trolls on
Most of the ill effects of patents would go away if they reduced the patent protection to only 5 years, and allowed no extensions. These days 5 years is plenty for even a small company to get to market and make some money on their invention.
Nowhere was it intended that by inventing one really great thing you could retire on it. Smart people need to be encouraged to invent more, not sit back and extort the globe.
I realize patent duration is something the US is not free to redefine without some disruption elsewhere, but we should at least use our bullyish instincts to do some good.
Well if my modpoints hadn't expired I'd have given you a +1 funny.
Engineers at my grade are required to file for 2 "company patents" per year as part of our yearly performance review. Not to get promoted, just to get an average rating.
/. would be shocked by the sheer crap that gets sent on.
US patents are not for us to pursue, that's a legal/business decision. We must simply supply the material, and the suits figure out where it goes. No one on
It also says in our company code of conduct and in our IP accountability training, that we are not allowed to modify GPL code without VP permission. The reason is not that our VP is a soulless bastard, he's actually a very good engineer, it's that our shareholders are afraid that it "destroys the value" of our company. It's all tied into the new age of corporate accountability.
Patriotic citizens would not believe such things, only terrorists would concoct such a story. Where did you get these ideas into your head?
They're just not doing coding anymore because the money went away. You'll find them in banks or development middle management (managing the PhDs from India). Probably marginally happy, certainly wishing they drank more in school and got the easier MBA degree.
It's funny but I know some people in NYC who are well on their way to that. They obsess over the perfect match, and are dissapointed if any aspect of their relationship does not match Hollywood level passion/lust/perfection. Needless to say, they're pretty lonely people and getting more than a bit bitter.
Probably so he can sell more Apple hardware on which it will run a gazillion times better.
Maybe he was trying to sell level 60 WoW characters and had multiple personality disorder. He was his own boss, and boy was he a slave driver.