Pound the pavement and do some moonlighting. Overcharge for your services. You obviously don't need the work that badly. Ask for a high rate. You might just get it. Make it twice what you'd normally ask an employer. Don't waste your time online. Go meet with people face to face. Put a professional front to your work. Get a couple of those 'me too' sales books for tips. You've got nothing to lose.
The real money in business is not in selling your skills. The money kicks in when you can package those skills as a service to other business. How many quasi-techie people do you know that run second-rate consulting businesses. Their service stinks. However, they package it to the customer.
If entrepenuership doesn't float your boat, find an exotic project to work on. Build a simple desktop search engine. How about an OSS OCR program. How about something involving speech recognition. Better yet, take some graduate courses. Many universities (IIUC, Columbia, FSU) have distance learning MSCS degrees. Stanford, JHU, CMU, and most state schools have some sort of evening courses as well. That little pet project of yours (or your advisor) may end up being your thesis. Just make an OSS project out of something.
I don't disagree with the other posters that said you should go out and enjoy yourself. However, if you are young and motivated, there's no reason to damper your enthusiasm. Work will do that all on it's own.
Don't feel too bad. I kind of questioned the poster's use of the word too. The only place I've ever seen that word used in such a context is the Bible (i.e. 'a horde of demons refer to themselves as legion').
It's not hard to pick up a book/documentation on a new langauage and start writing code. However, it is difficult to design an application effectively without knowing something about the language. Could I design a large scale C++ app effectively if I were a Java or Perl guru? Would you want some crusty old engineer with years of embedded systems experience and C++ skills designing a large scale J2EE database app. You take for granted the complexities of the software engineering process when your part of a team. Incidentally, if you think you can tackle a small project with a new language and not make some mistakes, you're only kidding yourself.
I once ran into a guy whose business was selling a product he developed in Access. Yes, he used the Access VBA Object Model out the yin-yang. While it's pretty powerful, it's mind bendingly a pain to get right. You pratically have to code those hard to solve problems by hand. Which means using the restrictive object model. If you're going to do that you might as well learn a little VB.
What you need is something like WebDB or Zope. As a programmer -- I hate it! It's to restrictive. However, as a lazy DBA who doesn't want to write simple custom 'applications' for everyone; it's great. Zope is free. I've used WebDB but not Zope. However, it seems similar. I have no idea how easy it is to administrate Zope. However, the key is that it allows end users to create simple dynamic web pages with a GUIish interface.
Another option is to find a cool wiki. Essentially this is another take on content management. You may find this model suits you needs better.
Do they "owe" him anything? No. Should they give him a fat bonus? Yes. No one wants a job for 6 months. Especially if you have to put your blood, sweat, and tears into it. Wait till these idiots try to hire some talented staff the next time around. Anybody who knows better won't touch them with a ten foot poll. Why do you think consultants charge start-up companies hefty fees? They know whats going down.
My advice is that you use this experience to your advantage. Next time an offer like this comes around, mention this job. Hopefully, the owners aren't such dicks that they'd give you a bad reference. References are cheap and he deserves a good one. Any business person with half a brain knows that experience like this is golden. Also, any business person knows you keep truly talented people around. Ever notice that top executives work in clusters. A CEO hires people he trusts. He hires people he knows. You reward people for their good work. You should try working as a contractor next time. Charge a fair hourly rate. Try to get some options in company. Heck, make them give you an inflated title. Use that to get your next job. Heck, go get a MBA and put together your own business plan. You've got useful experience. It will help you get into business school and get investors.
Look, it does suck. If nothing else, I feel for the guy. He did a good job, and now he's unemployed.
If this is true, it's a pretty 'dumb' easter egg. The whole point of the machine is to make its owner money. I guess they were fortunate the internet (in it's present form) wasn't available then.
I look at it as more of a non-statement. I've never seen a business decision that didn't have some reasoning behind it. If anything it tells me that the article was more of a fluff piece that anything else.
It's also worth noting that professors don't/won't put up with the same garbage that high school teachers have to. Also, state schools are subsidized by the gov't. Additionally, you've got endowments, corporate and gov't research grants. Oh yeah, even a good football team can bring in a little money. Additionally, have you ever seen the salaries of a tenured engineering professor? Even at a state school it can be as high as $150,000 per year. Heck, your average education probably comes out to about $40,000 to $50,000 per student. A tenured science professor can make 2 to 3 times as much as a high school teacher.
What has happened is that the world of CS has become far removed from the world of software engineering. When I see a kid studying MIS to become a software engineer these days, I just shrug my shoulders. While you need a lot of math if you want to be a computer scientist, you're right in saying that you don't need much math to be a software engineer. I think math can sharpen your mind, but I've found that to be somewhat of a negative for the modern workforce.
Do you just want to speak French or become the next great French author? While it may be a waste of time to study linguistics, a study of French grammar would not be a waste. The real question is how much of academic study (even if done in a hacker-friendly sort of way) is worthwhile? Do you think John Carmack ever picked up a book on Numerical Analysis or Linear Algebra? I'm guessing he did. See, when you go the self-taught route to gurudom you've got to pick up all the industrial skills and some of the relevant theory. Certainly, the key is that the original poster enjoys whatever he does.
Was Godel a philosopher? When your friends introduce you as the 'greatest logician since Aristotle', it would seem you could consider yourself a philosopher. While Russell turned mathematics into philosphy; Godel turned philosophy into mathematics. He wrote papers covering topics from ontological arguments to consistency of time travel. In fact, it wasn't so much the signifigance of his results as it was his shear intellectual rigour. Yet, the philosophical establishment considers Russell their darling and snubs Godel. Why is this? As long as philosphers lock themselves in the penthouse suite of the ivory tower they'll find they get little respect from relevant theoretical scientists. I appreciate science and religon for their pragmatic approach to the study of knowlege. I hate philosophy for it's irrelevance to every day life and it's disdain for more concrete science and theology.
While the above may seem like an off-topic rant, I merely wanted to point out that while I appreciate philosophical questions, I find I don't often appreciate philosopher's answers.
Assembly language won't make you a better 'software architect'. It won't teach you how to solve problems in code. However, a good book on assembly language is a poor-man's computer architecture course. Heck, I'd tell any hobbiest/hacker to learn assembly and pick up a circuits book. If you get pretty good, you'll probably know more about hardware that you average CS graduate.
However, if you want to learn to how to be a good 'software engineer' or a good IT professional, I'd definitely start with Java or C#. Further, inflaming the Slashdot crowd, I'd probably further recommend C# only because you can build GUI apps with it. Building a solid GUI application gives the beginner a feeling of accomplishment and power. Also, C# is a solid professional component building language. Unlike old-style VB you can build clean code with C#. C# might not be the most 'fun' language. It's about as opaque as lead. Still, from a professional standpoint, C# is a very 'productive' language.
Physicists have a very specific definition of the word 'predictability'. Any other science that doesn't meet this standard, no matter how useful is usually relegated to the world of descriptive science. However, the emergence of chaos, complexity theory, and a new world of informationally driven biology has given rise to a new pardigm. A new world of quasi-descriptive phenomena has emerged. While 'God doesn't play dice', it seems man must.
Is evolution predictable? Is a random walk predictable? I might know what neighborhood you happen to be visiting, but I certainly can't predict with certainty were you'll be.
Incidentally, physics has also formed areas of study to study the philosophical nature of physics. Especially gravitational and astronomical physics. We call this area cosmology. (Yeah, I've always thought metaphysics was a better term -- but it's taken.) Biology hasn't made this distinction yet. When philosophers and theoretical biologists discuss the philosophical and 'fundamental' side of their field, it's quickly relegated to the 'philosophy of science'.
My point is that biology is still defining it's 'mathematical spine'. Ideas that have corresponding terms in other fields have no such terminology in biology. Also, science made strong strides in the 20th century towards hyperspecialization. However, modern biology and applied chemistry are starting to blur those lines again.
While the research listed in the article is cool in a fundamental way. I'd have to see something more tangible before I could really comment on it. I'm not a biologist anyway, so I don't know how much good the article(s) in question would do. It's just that when I see a title that asks 'is evolution predictable', I'm inclined to say no.
(On a final note, genetic circuits give some 'predictable' results to. Does this make systems biology 'predictable'? I don't know.)
Yeah, I hope they make some libraries out of it. I think being able to record podcasts on a PDA is useful. It's not an earthshaking technology, but a neat thing none the less.
Incidentally, I really hate to sound like a troll, but I'm not impressed by the Media Lab's research anymore. I say this as someone whose looking for a research area for grad school. All of the "really cool" research seems to be elsewhere. While MIT certainly has a lot of good research and good degree programs; MIT used to be synonymous with CS. Has the mantle finally passed to CMU and Stanford or is canonical CS research dead?
Yeah, I was thinking that myself. However, like that old Toyota, whose odometer I rolled back numerous times (and drove in reverse for fun), it's not a very signifigant count of anything.
While fixing the russian economy is certainly a good thing, don't fool yourself in thinking that the only reason people break the law is because of high unemployment rates.
What's worse? The guy who complains about his job on a blog or the guy who complains about the blog on Slashdot? I'm going to let you in on a secret -- you're the whinner here! Geeze, you're going to click on his Google Ad-sense links so his account gets suspended. Even if you think the author is full of it -- just move on!
Some of the positives: 1. This guy is working. 2. He managed to keep his job for several years (so he couldn't have been such a f---up). 3. He has a positive outlook for HIS future. 4. He wrote a slanted, but interesting article. 5. The article is free! You don't have to read it.
I don't know what worse, you're post or the fact that it was moderated funny!
What's your Erdos' number? Is it a multiple of the square root of -1? See, there isn't six degrees of mathematical separation between the entire world and Paul Erdos. If you don't even publish mathematical/scientific research papers, you obviously won't have a number. If you deal entirely in string theory, you might have a very high Erdos' number. If you deal in analysis, maybe it's a bit lower. If you're a prominent computer scientist who does deal in CS theory, maybe it's even a reasonable number. If you're a young graph theorist, you've probably got a number under 5. If you're a really OLD Hungarian discrete mathematician, you might have a number of 1.
How many of those with Erdos' numbers under 3 have multiple papers under 3? How many have 10 or more? Sure, if you have 10 or more papers under 3 then you're probably into discrete math. Wait a second - the math actually works! What do you want to make a bet I could write a Perl script that could scan a database to determine with a high percent of accuracy who was a discrete mathematician? What would you want to bet I could find with 99.9% probability 1000 discrete mathematicans?
The NSA doesn't care if you get one call from a terrorist. Heck, they probably don't care if you get 100 calls from a one terrorist. However, if you repeatedly get numerous, long calls from multiple terrorists over an extended period of time, there's a good chance you are a terrorist or at least intimately related to one.
I don't particularly like the precedent we are setting here, but on the other hand, if I had to choose between invading Iraq or this particular issue, I'd take this in a heart beat. This is really fighting terrorism! They are not ease dropping on calls. Heck, this is about as non-invasive as you can get. There is a war on terror going on. We may not be fighting it properly, but Al Qaeda still exists, and Bin Laden is still on the loose. What do you want the US Gov't to do? How should they combat terrorism?
Slashdot Mirror
Pound the pavement and do some moonlighting. Overcharge for your services. You obviously don't need the work that badly. Ask for a high rate. You might just get it. Make it twice what you'd normally ask an employer. Don't waste your time online. Go meet with people face to face. Put a professional front to your work. Get a couple of those 'me too' sales books for tips. You've got nothing to lose.
The real money in business is not in selling your skills. The money kicks in when you can package those skills as a service to other business. How many quasi-techie people do you know that run second-rate consulting businesses. Their service stinks. However, they package it to the customer.
If entrepenuership doesn't float your boat, find an exotic project to work on. Build a simple desktop search engine. How about an OSS OCR program. How about something involving speech recognition. Better yet, take some graduate courses. Many universities (IIUC, Columbia, FSU) have distance learning MSCS degrees. Stanford, JHU, CMU, and most state schools have some sort of evening courses as well. That little pet project of yours (or your advisor) may end up being your thesis. Just make an OSS project out of something.
I don't disagree with the other posters that said you should go out and enjoy yourself. However, if you are young and motivated, there's no reason to damper your enthusiasm. Work will do that all on it's own.
Do you remember that guy who overloaded all of the operators in C++ just for fun? Don't be that guy.
Don't feel too bad. I kind of questioned the poster's use of the word too. The only place I've ever seen that word used in such a context is the Bible (i.e. 'a horde of demons refer to themselves as legion').
It's not hard to pick up a book/documentation on a new langauage and start writing code. However, it is difficult to design an application effectively without knowing something about the language. Could I design a large scale C++ app effectively if I were a Java or Perl guru? Would you want some crusty old engineer with years of embedded systems experience and C++ skills designing a large scale J2EE database app. You take for granted the complexities of the software engineering process when your part of a team. Incidentally, if you think you can tackle a small project with a new language and not make some mistakes, you're only kidding yourself.
What you need is something like WebDB or Zope. As a programmer -- I hate it! It's to restrictive. However, as a lazy DBA who doesn't want to write simple custom 'applications' for everyone; it's great. Zope is free. I've used WebDB but not Zope. However, it seems similar. I have no idea how easy it is to administrate Zope. However, the key is that it allows end users to create simple dynamic web pages with a GUIish interface.
Another option is to find a cool wiki. Essentially this is another take on content management. You may find this model suits you needs better.
Do they "owe" him anything? No. Should they give him a fat bonus? Yes. No one wants a job for 6 months. Especially if you have to put your blood, sweat, and tears into it. Wait till these idiots try to hire some talented staff the next time around. Anybody who knows better won't touch them with a ten foot poll. Why do you think consultants charge start-up companies hefty fees? They know whats going down.
My advice is that you use this experience to your advantage. Next time an offer like this comes around, mention this job. Hopefully, the owners aren't such dicks that they'd give you a bad reference. References are cheap and he deserves a good one. Any business person with half a brain knows that experience like this is golden. Also, any business person knows you keep truly talented people around. Ever notice that top executives work in clusters. A CEO hires people he trusts. He hires people he knows. You reward people for their good work. You should try working as a contractor next time. Charge a fair hourly rate. Try to get some options in company. Heck, make them give you an inflated title. Use that to get your next job. Heck, go get a MBA and put together your own business plan. You've got useful experience. It will help you get into business school and get investors.
Look, it does suck. If nothing else, I feel for the guy. He did a good job, and now he's unemployed.
If this is true, it's a pretty 'dumb' easter egg. The whole point of the machine is to make its owner money. I guess they were fortunate the internet (in it's present form) wasn't available then.
Okay, the terminator, terminates.... What does the googlenator do? Does it just 'count' Bill to death?
I look at it as more of a non-statement. I've never seen a business decision that didn't have some reasoning behind it. If anything it tells me that the article was more of a fluff piece that anything else.
How did this guy get rich? I didn't realize blogging was that profitable.
It's also worth noting that professors don't/won't put up with the same garbage that high school teachers have to. Also, state schools are subsidized by the gov't. Additionally, you've got endowments, corporate and gov't research grants. Oh yeah, even a good football team can bring in a little money. Additionally, have you ever seen the salaries of a tenured engineering professor? Even at a state school it can be as high as $150,000 per year. Heck, your average education probably comes out to about $40,000 to $50,000 per student. A tenured science professor can make 2 to 3 times as much as a high school teacher.
Have you been watching The Matrix again?
What has happened is that the world of CS has become far removed from the world of software engineering. When I see a kid studying MIS to become a software engineer these days, I just shrug my shoulders. While you need a lot of math if you want to be a computer scientist, you're right in saying that you don't need much math to be a software engineer. I think math can sharpen your mind, but I've found that to be somewhat of a negative for the modern workforce.
Do you just want to speak French or become the next great French author? While it may be a waste of time to study linguistics, a study of French grammar would not be a waste. The real question is how much of academic study (even if done in a hacker-friendly sort of way) is worthwhile? Do you think John Carmack ever picked up a book on Numerical Analysis or Linear Algebra? I'm guessing he did. See, when you go the self-taught route to gurudom you've got to pick up all the industrial skills and some of the relevant theory. Certainly, the key is that the original poster enjoys whatever he does.
What about Electrical Engineers?
Was Godel a philosopher? When your friends introduce you as the 'greatest logician since Aristotle', it would seem you could consider yourself a philosopher. While Russell turned mathematics into philosphy; Godel turned philosophy into mathematics. He wrote papers covering topics from ontological arguments to consistency of time travel. In fact, it wasn't so much the signifigance of his results as it was his shear intellectual rigour. Yet, the philosophical establishment considers Russell their darling and snubs Godel. Why is this? As long as philosphers lock themselves in the penthouse suite of the ivory tower they'll find they get little respect from relevant theoretical scientists. I appreciate science and religon for their pragmatic approach to the study of knowlege. I hate philosophy for it's irrelevance to every day life and it's disdain for more concrete science and theology.
While the above may seem like an off-topic rant, I merely wanted to point out that while I appreciate philosophical questions, I find I don't often appreciate philosopher's answers.
Assembly language won't make you a better 'software architect'. It won't teach you how to solve problems in code. However, a good book on assembly language is a poor-man's computer architecture course. Heck, I'd tell any hobbiest/hacker to learn assembly and pick up a circuits book. If you get pretty good, you'll probably know more about hardware that you average CS graduate.
However, if you want to learn to how to be a good 'software engineer' or a good IT professional, I'd definitely start with Java or C#. Further, inflaming the Slashdot crowd, I'd probably further recommend C# only because you can build GUI apps with it. Building a solid GUI application gives the beginner a feeling of accomplishment and power. Also, C# is a solid professional component building language. Unlike old-style VB you can build clean code with C#. C# might not be the most 'fun' language. It's about as opaque as lead. Still, from a professional standpoint, C# is a very 'productive' language.
Physicists have a very specific definition of the word 'predictability'. Any other science that doesn't meet this standard, no matter how useful is usually relegated to the world of descriptive science. However, the emergence of chaos, complexity theory, and a new world of informationally driven biology has given rise to a new pardigm. A new world of quasi-descriptive phenomena has emerged. While 'God doesn't play dice', it seems man must.
Is evolution predictable? Is a random walk predictable? I might know what neighborhood you happen to be visiting, but I certainly can't predict with certainty were you'll be.
Incidentally, physics has also formed areas of study to study the philosophical nature of physics. Especially gravitational and astronomical physics. We call this area cosmology. (Yeah, I've always thought metaphysics was a better term -- but it's taken.) Biology hasn't made this distinction yet. When philosophers and theoretical biologists discuss the philosophical and 'fundamental' side of their field, it's quickly relegated to the 'philosophy of science'.
My point is that biology is still defining it's 'mathematical spine'. Ideas that have corresponding terms in other fields have no such terminology in biology. Also, science made strong strides in the 20th century towards hyperspecialization. However, modern biology and applied chemistry are starting to blur those lines again.
While the research listed in the article is cool in a fundamental way. I'd have to see something more tangible before I could really comment on it. I'm not a biologist anyway, so I don't know how much good the article(s) in question would do. It's just that when I see a title that asks 'is evolution predictable', I'm inclined to say no.
(On a final note, genetic circuits give some 'predictable' results to. Does this make systems biology 'predictable'? I don't know.)
Yeah, I hope they make some libraries out of it. I think being able to record podcasts on a PDA is useful. It's not an earthshaking technology, but a neat thing none the less.
Incidentally, I really hate to sound like a troll, but I'm not impressed by the Media Lab's research anymore. I say this as someone whose looking for a research area for grad school. All of the "really cool" research seems to be elsewhere. While MIT certainly has a lot of good research and good degree programs; MIT used to be synonymous with CS. Has the mantle finally passed to CMU and Stanford or is canonical CS research dead?
Yeah, I'll throw that in the category of SneakerNet, natural firewalls, and miniature wind tunnels (man blowing through straw).
Yeah, I was thinking that myself. However, like that old Toyota, whose odometer I rolled back numerous times (and drove in reverse for fun), it's not a very signifigant count of anything.
While fixing the russian economy is certainly a good thing, don't fool yourself in thinking that the only reason people break the law is because of high unemployment rates.
What's worse? The guy who complains about his job on a blog or the guy who complains about the blog on Slashdot? I'm going to let you in on a secret -- you're the whinner here! Geeze, you're going to click on his Google Ad-sense links so his account gets suspended. Even if you think the author is full of it -- just move on!
Some of the positives:
1. This guy is working.
2. He managed to keep his job for several years (so he couldn't have been such a f---up).
3. He has a positive outlook for HIS future.
4. He wrote a slanted, but interesting article.
5. The article is free! You don't have to read it.
I don't know what worse, you're post or the fact that it was moderated funny!
What's your Erdos' number? Is it a multiple of the square root of -1? See, there isn't six degrees of mathematical separation between the entire world and Paul Erdos. If you don't even publish mathematical/scientific research papers, you obviously won't have a number. If you deal entirely in string theory, you might have a very high Erdos' number. If you deal in analysis, maybe it's a bit lower. If you're a prominent computer scientist who does deal in CS theory, maybe it's even a reasonable number. If you're a young graph theorist, you've probably got a number under 5. If you're a really OLD Hungarian discrete mathematician, you might have a number of 1.
How many of those with Erdos' numbers under 3 have multiple papers under 3? How many have 10 or more? Sure, if you have 10 or more papers under 3 then you're probably into discrete math. Wait a second - the math actually works! What do you want to make a bet I could write a Perl script that could scan a database to determine with a high percent of accuracy who was a discrete mathematician? What would you want to bet I could find with 99.9% probability 1000 discrete mathematicans?
The NSA doesn't care if you get one call from a terrorist. Heck, they probably don't care if you get 100 calls from a one terrorist. However, if you repeatedly get numerous, long calls from multiple terrorists over an extended period of time, there's a good chance you are a terrorist or at least intimately related to one.
I don't particularly like the precedent we are setting here, but on the other hand, if I had to choose between invading Iraq or this particular issue, I'd take this in a heart beat. This is really fighting terrorism! They are not ease dropping on calls. Heck, this is about as non-invasive as you can get. There is a war on terror going on. We may not be fighting it properly, but Al Qaeda still exists, and Bin Laden is still on the loose. What do you want the US Gov't to do? How should they combat terrorism?
So the 1 was either there or it was not!