I graduated back in April with a Computer Engineering degree and ran into much the same problem (everyone wanted >= 5 years experience, and your average HR minion couldn't see past the qualifications written on the page so I kept getting filtered from these positions -- many went unfilled for months, and even though I was qualified apart from the 5 years, I never got a call back.) I didn't get a job until September, and I was very actively looking for all four months in between. I know many others who graduated with me who had very similar experiences.
While I agree with the parent that going to college/university will make you a better coder, and may well result in a better-paying job it won't help at all with the experience problem. Thus, going to school is not necessarily the answer to the grandparent poster's problem (after all, school isn't free... he'll need to pay for it somehow). What may be the answer (as another poster mentioned) is to stop looking on job portals. His best bet is definitely to meet some people in the industry and just be in the right place/right time situation when someone is looking for someone like him. The Monster/Workopolis/etc. jobs had a really poor call back rate in my experience, and they tended to want people that had tons of experience. From the other side -- the place that I'm working at now refuses to post on Monster because they get thousands of unqualified applicants and couldn't be bothered to sift through them. My feeling is that there is an probably excess of entry-level people now (I started CE in '01 along with a bunch of bubble-chasers, so there are still bubble grads coming onto the market), but a shortage of senior-level. Thus you see a whole bunch of unfilled senior-level positions. Any entry-level posting gets swarmed. Your best bet is therefore to catch someone who is thinking about posting an entry-level position and save them the trouble of having to go through the applicant swarm. And yes, that's much easier said than done (took me four months -- could've easily been longer, and I *had* a degree)
As for answering TFA's question, I would say that they would probably be well-served to make a big deal out of how in-demand their graduates/students are in the business world, and drop some of the names of the companies that are trying to hire their students. The fact that they are finding jobs for their students is significant, and they should try to make this known.
"but they haven't done any of the things a reputable company should be doing: Offering complete replacement discs (without foistware), coupons/credit for further Sony products ("Don't boycott our brand, please"), and promise not to abuse their actual customers again."
Actually, it appears that they *do* plan to offer replacement discs. I tried to post this to the main page (a fairly significant development, IMHO), but alas it was rejected. In other news, Mark Russinovich is declaring victory as a result.
I'm not saying that makes everything okay... I'm just saying that they're not being *total* jerks about this (just *partial* jerks). I expect we'll see more of a response out of Sony once that large bureaucratic ball eventually does get rolling. In an organization the size of Sony, I'd bet it has quite a lot of intertia.
And no, I won't be buying any more Sony CDs... or probably anything else - just on principle.
For the sake of argument, consider the following: I suspect that a fair amount of the trade in pirated media over p2p is caused by people who are basically "hording" media. I know people that have binders upon binders of CDs full of burned movies and music of which they have watched/listened to less than 10%. I once read a fairly well-written article (long since lost the link... sorry) that basically made the conclusion that people will horde things if they foresee the supply being cut off (ie. they know Priacy is bad and that will eventually get shut down) and I think in a lot of ways that makes sense (certainly consistent with the binders of CDs).
At the same time, we've got the ITMS model which, while successful, still isn't that attractive to some people (I can't stand the iTunes software, for example). It also places restrictions, however fairly reasonable ones, on what you can do with your files. Generally speaking, people don't like to be restricted. Cable and Satellite companies have had Pay-Per-View movie distribution systems for years and they really haven't done all that well. Why? I'm going to guess that there was a readily available alternative (renting) that was considerably less restrictive even though it was less convenient to get the movies (you need to go to the store... etc). ITMS' success may well be limited by a similar effect - usage options are *generally* less restricted on unprotected CDs (ignoring, for a moment, things like the Sony DRM debacle which are still the exception and not the rule).
Then there's the amusement park scenario. You can use a pay-per-ride model, or you can use "all-you-can-eat" model. Most amusement parks now are using the latter. Why? Because if people buy ride tickets, they make damn sure they use them all because they have a finite number of them and want to get the most out of it (kind of like the guys with binders full of CDs). The guy who pays $40 or whatever to ride all day probably ends up riding fewer rides (the costs to the park are the same, and I can't imagine them intentionally using a less-profitable admission scheme).
Maybe this is what the Recording / Motion Picture industry really needs... a flat-rate all-you-can-eat media download service. You can pretty much guarantee that the guy with binders full of CDs wouldn't download as much if he was on a service like that... he could just go and get the 10% of the media that he actually wants to watch when he wants to watch it, and it would all be perfectly legal. Sure, there would be some people who would abuse it, but the overwhelming majority would happily pay their monthly fee and download their two or three movies a month. You can still sell DVDs as a "value add" (with special features, pretty packaging, higher resolution and whatnot) but there is clearly a demand for being able to just watch a movie without having to invest the $20 in something that you may not even like.
Basically, you make a for-pay service that's *more* convenient than p2p services -- the media's always available, easily searchable, the files always work, and you always get a reasonable transter rate. I suspect rather strongly that you would see p2p usage drop right off if something like that was available at a reasonable price. I'd happily pay for it.
I fully realize that Satan would likely invest in a good parka long before **AA would ever agree to something like this. That doesn't stop it from being a good idea. A far better idea than suing your customers and installing rootkits on their computers.
Unfortunately for consumers, the record companies basically get to give it to us both ways here. They get to DRM the crap out of everything because the DMCA, etc. say they can. If anyone complains about it, they get to call them Thieves(tm). If people boycott their products, they get to point at the declining sales and say "Look! The impact of P2P is getting WORSE! We need more laws to protect us!" and while they're at it sue every twelve-year-old they can get their hands on for millions of dollars.
While I agree that Sony has clearly crossed the line here, I'd bet that boycotting them stands about as much chance of making the situation worse as it does of making it better.
While the loss of firewire is no doubt tragic to some people, to the overwhelming majority it's really no big deal -- comparable transfer rate with USB 2.0, and virtually any computer built recently has loads of USB 2.0 ports.
IMHO, the greatest misfeature of iPods is their continued lack of a user-replaceable battery. This has been a problem since the first-generation model, and still hasn't been addressed on the fifth. The "send us your iPod and we'll replace the battery for you" solution is mighty inconvenient and expensive, especially for those of us who don't live in the US.
Besides the advantage of being able to zip over to the local electronics store for a new battery when the original one stops holding a charge, it would also allow people to own more than one good battery, thus providing a simple way to extend the effective battery life... battery died? Just pop in a fresh one.
This seems like a huge value-add that would be really easy and inexpensive to implement. I know I won't be buying an iPod until they do.
Or perhaps the best of both worlds and get a BS in Computer Engineering? That's what I thought.
I recently graduated with one of those (CE) and let's just say the jobs weren't exactly throwing themselves at me. Engineering Degree != easy job. And no, I wasn't restricting my search to a particular area, or even a particular country.
From what I've gathered over the past few months, the problem is that there seems to be a mismatch between the available experience and what companies seem to expect. I saw lots and lots of postings for people with 5-10 years of experience go unfilled for months, and not very many postings at all for entry-level or junior positions. I even had an HR person at one organization explain that every time they posted a "junior" or "entry-level" position, they got "thousands" of applicants. They found it easier just to ask for more experience because it resulted in a much smaller pool of qualified applicants and they spent less time narrowing it down.
In the latest issue of my local engineering professional organization's monthly publication, there were dozens of ads for "I've recently graduated and I need a job" from all disciplines (Civil, Mechanical, EE, etc.) and only two from employers looking for people (both had the word "director" in them).
Also, to get a professional designation (P.Eng.) you need several years of relevant experience (varies by area depending on your professional organization... it's four years here) and unfortunately for the overwhelming majority of engineers doing "computer work", most software development doesn't count as "relevant experience". As a result, many computer and software engineers never get their P.Eng., and don't actually become a "true professional".
So wrt the parent post - in my experience being a recent engineering grad makes you no further ahead than a recent CS grad if you're trying to do "computer work". There's a good chance of never getting a professinal designation as an engineer doing "computer work" -- and thus never becoming a "true professional". So, why choose BSCS over BSEE or BSCE? Because you don't feel like taking four or five calculus courses? Because you have no interest in working on hardware?
If I had it to do over, I would still choose CE because I am interested in the types of courses a CE student takes. If all someone wanted to do was generic "computer work", then a CS degree is likely more than adequate, and the coursework load is somewhat less insane.
I like to think not. It was indeed sarcastic, the point of which being that many (all?) of the people being held in Guantanamo haven't been charged with anything. What I was (sarcastically) implying was that in India it's actually a crime that you can be charged with, whereas in America you get accused of being a terrorist ship you off and don't bother charging you with anything.
Man, do I ever feel like a chump for having to explain that one. Come on people... I was trying to be funny!:)
If some American company released some software that showed the US as a territory of, say, Saudi Arabia it seems as though the response of the US government would be something along the lines of putting them on a terrorist watch list. If they get really unlucky, they get shipped off to Guantanamo. I guess the difference is that in India, you actually get *charged* with something...
Just because you don't agree with various laws in another country doesn't automatically make that country "unfree". If you want to do business in a foreign country, you are (and should be) subject to their laws. If you can't handle that, don't do business there. It's that simple.
time for someone to take the lead and bring to the table a variant of OGG with built in copy right protection.
Which would be great if it had enough acceptance. There aren't very many portable OGG players on the market that I'm aware of. Unless you can convince Apple, Sony, etc. to drop their proprietary formats in favour of OGG+DRM it won't get off the ground.
There's way more money in being Apple right now, with the proprietary format that plays on the most popular player. (and apparently cry about it if someone else tries to get a piece). I don't think Mr. Jobs will be in any particular hurry to move to OGG+DRM.
More useful to the consumer than Yet Another Media Format (tm) would be an easy way to convert from the format you buy to the one that your favorite player uses (ie. Real's on the right track here, but don't have it quite right). But then, the tricky part isn't converting the audio, it's converting the DRM format so the rules get preserved. Once again, DRM ruins everything.
Well, that and according the the content industries format shifting is evil to some degree so this will get squashed once the appropriate laws are purchased.
I think I just reminded myself why I don't buy digial music online...
By eliminating them we'd actually be doing society and the economy a favor by putting the money back in the hands of the locales that need it most.
The key problem being that poorer locales have a smaller tax base (lower income == lower tax revenue) so the "locales that need it most" won't have the resources to support their welfare programs.
Trustworthiness of government aside, there needs to be some fair mechanism to transfer social aid money from areas that have it to areas that don't. Otherwise the poor locales just keep getting poorer.
Interesting story about this sort of thing that came up in the local liquor store the other day:
I live in Western Canada, and am accustomed to finding bottles of hard liquor in 750mL (roughly 26oz.) and 1.14L (rougly 40oz.) -- in fact in causal conversation, they're often referred to as a "2-6" or a "40". So imagine our surprise when we found a bottle of Crown Royal (good stuff, btw) in a 1L bottle, which was right next to the 1.14L bottles, and you'd have to look pretty close to tell the difference. They also happened to be a really awesome deal as compared to the other two (only a couple dollars more than the 750) so we got one.
Upon closer inspection, it was labelled for sale in the US (listed the US importer, and the location of manufacture was "Toronto" instead of wherever they're actually made... Kitchener, I think.) So basically, this case of bottles must've ended up on the wrong truck or something and landed at this liquor store (who was apparently trying to sell them as fast as they could, at that price).
Since Crown Royal markets itself as "Canadian Whisky", do they actually sell it in a 1L size in the states? If so, I find it fairly funny that they would offer a nicely-metricized size in the states to look "all Canadian and novel", but sell it in sizes based on Standard/Imperial measure in Canada.
Slashdot Mirror
So did NetMeeting. What's your point?
I graduated back in April with a Computer Engineering degree and ran into much the same problem (everyone wanted >= 5 years experience, and your average HR minion couldn't see past the qualifications written on the page so I kept getting filtered from these positions -- many went unfilled for months, and even though I was qualified apart from the 5 years, I never got a call back.) I didn't get a job until September, and I was very actively looking for all four months in between. I know many others who graduated with me who had very similar experiences.
While I agree with the parent that going to college/university will make you a better coder, and may well result in a better-paying job it won't help at all with the experience problem. Thus, going to school is not necessarily the answer to the grandparent poster's problem (after all, school isn't free... he'll need to pay for it somehow). What may be the answer (as another poster mentioned) is to stop looking on job portals. His best bet is definitely to meet some people in the industry and just be in the right place/right time situation when someone is looking for someone like him. The Monster/Workopolis/etc. jobs had a really poor call back rate in my experience, and they tended to want people that had tons of experience. From the other side -- the place that I'm working at now refuses to post on Monster because they get thousands of unqualified applicants and couldn't be bothered to sift through them. My feeling is that there is an probably excess of entry-level people now (I started CE in '01 along with a bunch of bubble-chasers, so there are still bubble grads coming onto the market), but a shortage of senior-level. Thus you see a whole bunch of unfilled senior-level positions. Any entry-level posting gets swarmed. Your best bet is therefore to catch someone who is thinking about posting an entry-level position and save them the trouble of having to go through the applicant swarm. And yes, that's much easier said than done (took me four months -- could've easily been longer, and I *had* a degree)
As for answering TFA's question, I would say that they would probably be well-served to make a big deal out of how in-demand their graduates/students are in the business world, and drop some of the names of the companies that are trying to hire their students. The fact that they are finding jobs for their students is significant, and they should try to make this known.
and Inkjet Printers.
"but they haven't done any of the things a reputable company should be doing: Offering complete replacement discs (without foistware), coupons/credit for further Sony products ("Don't boycott our brand, please"), and promise not to abuse their actual customers again."
Actually, it appears that they *do* plan to offer replacement discs. I tried to post this to the main page (a fairly significant development, IMHO), but alas it was rejected. In other news, Mark Russinovich is declaring victory as a result.
I'm not saying that makes everything okay... I'm just saying that they're not being *total* jerks about this (just *partial* jerks). I expect we'll see more of a response out of Sony once that large bureaucratic ball eventually does get rolling. In an organization the size of Sony, I'd bet it has quite a lot of intertia.
And no, I won't be buying any more Sony CDs... or probably anything else - just on principle.
For the sake of argument, consider the following:
I suspect that a fair amount of the trade in pirated media over p2p is caused by people who are basically "hording" media. I know people that have binders upon binders of CDs full of burned movies and music of which they have watched/listened to less than 10%. I once read a fairly well-written article (long since lost the link... sorry) that basically made the conclusion that people will horde things if they foresee the supply being cut off (ie. they know Priacy is bad and that will eventually get shut down) and I think in a lot of ways that makes sense (certainly consistent with the binders of CDs).
At the same time, we've got the ITMS model which, while successful, still isn't that attractive to some people (I can't stand the iTunes software, for example). It also places restrictions, however fairly reasonable ones, on what you can do with your files. Generally speaking, people don't like to be restricted. Cable and Satellite companies have had Pay-Per-View movie distribution systems for years and they really haven't done all that well. Why? I'm going to guess that there was a readily available alternative (renting) that was considerably less restrictive even though it was less convenient to get the movies (you need to go to the store... etc). ITMS' success may well be limited by a similar effect - usage options are *generally* less restricted on unprotected CDs (ignoring, for a moment, things like the Sony DRM debacle which are still the exception and not the rule).
Then there's the amusement park scenario. You can use a pay-per-ride model, or you can use "all-you-can-eat" model. Most amusement parks now are using the latter. Why? Because if people buy ride tickets, they make damn sure they use them all because they have a finite number of them and want to get the most out of it (kind of like the guys with binders full of CDs). The guy who pays $40 or whatever to ride all day probably ends up riding fewer rides (the costs to the park are the same, and I can't imagine them intentionally using a less-profitable admission scheme).
Maybe this is what the Recording / Motion Picture industry really needs... a flat-rate all-you-can-eat media download service. You can pretty much guarantee that the guy with binders full of CDs wouldn't download as much if he was on a service like that... he could just go and get the 10% of the media that he actually wants to watch when he wants to watch it, and it would all be perfectly legal. Sure, there would be some people who would abuse it, but the overwhelming majority would happily pay their monthly fee and download their two or three movies a month. You can still sell DVDs as a "value add" (with special features, pretty packaging, higher resolution and whatnot) but there is clearly a demand for being able to just watch a movie without having to invest the $20 in something that you may not even like.
Basically, you make a for-pay service that's *more* convenient than p2p services -- the media's always available, easily searchable, the files always work, and you always get a reasonable transter rate. I suspect rather strongly that you would see p2p usage drop right off if something like that was available at a reasonable price. I'd happily pay for it.
I fully realize that Satan would likely invest in a good parka long before **AA would ever agree to something like this. That doesn't stop it from being a good idea. A far better idea than suing your customers and installing rootkits on their computers.
Unfortunately for consumers, the record companies basically get to give it to us both ways here. They get to DRM the crap out of everything because the DMCA, etc. say they can. If anyone complains about it, they get to call them Thieves(tm). If people boycott their products, they get to point at the declining sales and say "Look! The impact of P2P is getting WORSE! We need more laws to protect us!" and while they're at it sue every twelve-year-old they can get their hands on for millions of dollars. While I agree that Sony has clearly crossed the line here, I'd bet that boycotting them stands about as much chance of making the situation worse as it does of making it better.
While the loss of firewire is no doubt tragic to some people, to the overwhelming majority it's really no big deal -- comparable transfer rate with USB 2.0, and virtually any computer built recently has loads of USB 2.0 ports.
IMHO, the greatest misfeature of iPods is their continued lack of a user-replaceable battery. This has been a problem since the first-generation model, and still hasn't been addressed on the fifth. The "send us your iPod and we'll replace the battery for you" solution is mighty inconvenient and expensive, especially for those of us who don't live in the US.
Besides the advantage of being able to zip over to the local electronics store for a new battery when the original one stops holding a charge, it would also allow people to own more than one good battery, thus providing a simple way to extend the effective battery life... battery died? Just pop in a fresh one.
This seems like a huge value-add that would be really easy and inexpensive to implement. I know I won't be buying an iPod until they do.
Or perhaps the best of both worlds and get a BS in Computer Engineering? That's what I thought.
I recently graduated with one of those (CE) and let's just say the jobs weren't exactly throwing themselves at me. Engineering Degree != easy job. And no, I wasn't restricting my search to a particular area, or even a particular country.
From what I've gathered over the past few months, the problem is that there seems to be a mismatch between the available experience and what companies seem to expect. I saw lots and lots of postings for people with 5-10 years of experience go unfilled for months, and not very many postings at all for entry-level or junior positions. I even had an HR person at one organization explain that every time they posted a "junior" or "entry-level" position, they got "thousands" of applicants. They found it easier just to ask for more experience because it resulted in a much smaller pool of qualified applicants and they spent less time narrowing it down.
In the latest issue of my local engineering professional organization's monthly publication, there were dozens of ads for "I've recently graduated and I need a job" from all disciplines (Civil, Mechanical, EE, etc.) and only two from employers looking for people (both had the word "director" in them).
Also, to get a professional designation (P.Eng.) you need several years of relevant experience (varies by area depending on your professional organization... it's four years here) and unfortunately for the overwhelming majority of engineers doing "computer work", most software development doesn't count as "relevant experience". As a result, many computer and software engineers never get their P.Eng., and don't actually become a "true professional".
So wrt the parent post - in my experience being a recent engineering grad makes you no further ahead than a recent CS grad if you're trying to do "computer work". There's a good chance of never getting a professinal designation as an engineer doing "computer work" -- and thus never becoming a "true professional". So, why choose BSCS over BSEE or BSCE? Because you don't feel like taking four or five calculus courses? Because you have no interest in working on hardware?
If I had it to do over, I would still choose CE because I am interested in the types of courses a CE student takes. If all someone wanted to do was generic "computer work", then a CS degree is likely more than adequate, and the coursework load is somewhat less insane.
-AG
I like to think not. It was indeed sarcastic, the point of which being that many (all?) of the people being held in Guantanamo haven't been charged with anything. What I was (sarcastically) implying was that in India it's actually a crime that you can be charged with, whereas in America you get accused of being a terrorist ship you off and don't bother charging you with anything.
Man, do I ever feel like a chump for having to explain that one. Come on people... I was trying to be funny! :)
If some American company released some software that showed the US as a territory of, say, Saudi Arabia it seems as though the response of the US government would be something along the lines of putting them on a terrorist watch list. If they get really unlucky, they get shipped off to Guantanamo. I guess the difference is that in India, you actually get *charged* with something... Just because you don't agree with various laws in another country doesn't automatically make that country "unfree". If you want to do business in a foreign country, you are (and should be) subject to their laws. If you can't handle that, don't do business there. It's that simple.
Interesting story about this sort of thing that came up in the local liquor store the other day:
I live in Western Canada, and am accustomed to finding bottles of hard liquor in 750mL (roughly 26oz.) and 1.14L (rougly 40oz.) -- in fact in causal conversation, they're often referred to as a "2-6" or a "40". So imagine our surprise when we found a bottle of Crown Royal (good stuff, btw) in a 1L bottle, which was right next to the 1.14L bottles, and you'd have to look pretty close to tell the difference. They also happened to be a really awesome deal as compared to the other two (only a couple dollars more than the 750) so we got one.
Upon closer inspection, it was labelled for sale in the US (listed the US importer, and the location of manufacture was "Toronto" instead of wherever they're actually made... Kitchener, I think.) So basically, this case of bottles must've ended up on the wrong truck or something and landed at this liquor store (who was apparently trying to sell them as fast as they could, at that price).
Since Crown Royal markets itself as "Canadian Whisky", do they actually sell it in a 1L size in the states? If so, I find it fairly funny that they would offer a nicely-metricized size in the states to look "all Canadian and novel", but sell it in sizes based on Standard/Imperial measure in Canada.