It's been something like three years since Schmidt said that, and people are still quoting it out of context (facepalm). The comment was in reference to activities performed using Google's services, and was qualified with "the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it's important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."
People need to realize that spreading knee-jerk misconceptions like this is damaging to Internet activism. You aren't helping the privacy cause by building up straw men instead of attacking the actual problematic stuff. The members of congress who support this legislation and the corporations backing them must be loving that so many people are ignoring them to instead focus on telling everyone how bad Schmidt and Google are.
But the protectionist job dilution argument ("dey took r jerbs") ignores the fact that the most talented employees bring more value to the US economy than the effect of this dilution. As long as the bar on talent is set sufficiently high, these immigrants will increase the size of the pie by more than the small piece they're carving out of it. By not letting them into the US we're effectively boosting the Indian, Chinese, etc. economies at the expense of the US economy.
The key, again, is to set the bar high enough. Obviously you don't want to make it easy for immigrants to come in and work as truck drivers or in retail. But in jobs where their value is extremely high, such as at companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, etc., where salaries are extremely high and it's therefore clear there aren't enough American workers, it should be an easy argument that these employees bring a lot of value and the cost to the US is not all that high.
You don't think the $200,000+ total compensation packages that companies like Facebook routinely offer (including to H-1B holders, BTW) are "high paying" enough or "secure" enough?
While it's true that the H-1B system is heavily abused, and that most of the visas probably shouldn't be granted, Facebook is not simply lobbying for more H-1Bs. They're lobbying for more more comprehensive reform that would allow more legitimate high skilled workers into the country, and fewer illegitimate ones. There needs to be a visa for truly high end employees. Facebook probably only hires people in the top 1%, and H-1B lumps them into the same category as people in the 50th percentile.
In the 8 years I've been in Silicon Valley, the prevailing wage for software engineers at top companies has increased by more than 50%. To suggest that there aren't jobs at companies like Facebook and Google and Apple for high-skilled American workers is crazy. How high would our salaries have to rise for you to admit there's a shortage? When we're being paid like professional athletes?
One big flaw in your argument is that the linked studies seem to focus on individual productivity. What about team productivity? I can definitely see myself producing more code if I worked in a more isolated environment, or whatever other metric you'd like to use, but I think my team's overall effectiveness would suffer. Note that we don't work alone in cubicles or closed offices, but at desks in an open environment as is common these days. It's hard for me to imagine a remote work environment -- even with chat and Google video hangouts constantly running -- that could match the free flow of ideas and information that we get from working right next to one another. The distractions to individual productivity are more than compensated for by being more plugged in to what other people are doing, which lets everyone make better decisions that save time in the long run.
I'm not sure why so many people are reacting as though there's a universally superior approach here. All teams and organizations are different. Having employees present at the office seems to work for Google, and presumably Mayer has good reason to think it will work at Yahoo as well. I'm sure there are also lots of big organizations where the opposite is true.
Oh spare me. They aren't going to turn away a qualified candidate that applies in a conventional way. This is a way for them to get some free publicity and maybe even (heaven forbid) have some fun.
A feat worthy of congratulations, to be sure, but it has no bearing on the real world - though many, including Google, pretended that it does.
Would you argue that intelligence has no bearing on the real world, or that successful competitive programmers aren't highly intelligent? Because your comment implies that you consider one or the other to be true.
They changed the rules for reference materials starting with last year's contest.
But there really wasn't much point in bringing tons of books anyway. In my experience, for books to be useful in the ACM contest, you have to be thoroughly familiar with them. In addition, very few books present the information in a form that you can use in a program quickly. Most good teams would always prepare their own notes and prewritten code anyway.
It may be that what they really wanted to prevent was people bringing in solutions to hundreds of old contests, just in case there's a Finals problem that's very similar. There are people who have solved thousands of problems on online contest sites like acm.uva.es.
That is definitely not true. The contest didn't start to become very international until recently (the last 10 years or so), so prior to that US teams won most of the time. The last time a US team won was in 1997, but they've placed well since then (e.g. MIT was 2nd in 2002).
I know two engineers at Google who dropped out of college and don't have degrees. If you are truly bright and know more about computer science than 99.9% of CS graduates, then I don't think Google cares about your credentials.
Another myth is that you need a Ph.D. to work at Google. I don't know what the ratio is, but they do hire plenty of people without, and did so before the IPO. I suspect the main reason they have so many Ph.D.'s is simply that they hire really smart people, and really smart people are more likely to have one.
If you only have a Bachelor's or Master's and they want to hire you, they'll most likely try to convince you that working at Google may be a better option than pursuing a doctorate. Google employees do get the opportunity to pursue research interests.
If that's the case, don't you think they're looking in the wrong place? I was a finalist last year and also know many of the competitors from other competitions as well. I think more than half of them already have PhD's or are currently working towards one.
Meh. Google likes to hire these potentially "crap programmers", and I think I'll take their word about what makes a good programmer over yours.
The bottom line is that to do well in these kind of competitions, you have to be smart, but also able to implement your ideas quickly and accurately. The latter being a lot less trivial than you make it out to be. I rather doubt many people that smart would have much trouble designing good UIs or writing maintainable code. Problem solving skills are transferrable.
Does anyone know if Jimmy Mardell was hired by Google?
As far as I know, Jimmy already had a job, so no. I'm sure they wanted to hire him though (they'd be crazy not to). I do know of two other finalists who did get hired on full-time, and some of the finalists who are still students got summer internships.
I know you're joking, but I don't think that's entirely accurate. Titan's atmospheric pressure is only 1.5 times that of Earth. It's definitely no Venus.
Here is a page with some info on Titan, including artists renderings that depict a spectacular sky.
I was one of the 25 finalists. I find your comments most interesting. Please explain to me how they were using us, or what problem we solved for them, because I'm not aware of this.;)
The problems will have model solutions already prepared beforehand for judging purposes. You don't have to give away anything they don't already know in order to solve the problems.
Can you cite any examples of what you're talking about? Or at least not post Anonymously if you're going to put forth such allegations?
I've been competing on TC for a year and a half. The closest I've seen to what you describe are a couple of instances where they used problems that had previously been used on ACM ICPC regional contests. However, some of these problems are so simple in concept or well known in the computer science literature that such happenings aren't surprising.
It sounds to me that you just didn't do as well as you liked and are bitter. Chances are these problems that you think were "frequently cavorted between each other" were solved using standard techniques that you were just ignorant of.
I am glad you understand some of most basic and well known ideas of software engineering. But I would have to disagree. I think if someone has the problem solving skills and precision of thought (as one member so nicely put it) to do well at TopCoder, they certainly have the skills to write robust, durable, and re-usable code. I would argue that such concepts are in fact fairly trivial relative to the skills TC emphasizes.
Yes, but it's highly unlikely that such code would be useful. The maximum size of input in TopCoder contests is quite small (a 50x50 array at most). Something like Burrows-Wheeler isn't going to be of much use for that kind of input.
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It's been something like three years since Schmidt said that, and people are still quoting it out of context (facepalm). The comment was in reference to activities performed using Google's services, and was qualified with "the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it's important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."
People need to realize that spreading knee-jerk misconceptions like this is damaging to Internet activism. You aren't helping the privacy cause by building up straw men instead of attacking the actual problematic stuff. The members of congress who support this legislation and the corporations backing them must be loving that so many people are ignoring them to instead focus on telling everyone how bad Schmidt and Google are.
But the protectionist job dilution argument ("dey took r jerbs") ignores the fact that the most talented employees bring more value to the US economy than the effect of this dilution. As long as the bar on talent is set sufficiently high, these immigrants will increase the size of the pie by more than the small piece they're carving out of it. By not letting them into the US we're effectively boosting the Indian, Chinese, etc. economies at the expense of the US economy.
The key, again, is to set the bar high enough. Obviously you don't want to make it easy for immigrants to come in and work as truck drivers or in retail. But in jobs where their value is extremely high, such as at companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, etc., where salaries are extremely high and it's therefore clear there aren't enough American workers, it should be an easy argument that these employees bring a lot of value and the cost to the US is not all that high.
You don't think the $200,000+ total compensation packages that companies like Facebook routinely offer (including to H-1B holders, BTW) are "high paying" enough or "secure" enough?
While it's true that the H-1B system is heavily abused, and that most of the visas probably shouldn't be granted, Facebook is not simply lobbying for more H-1Bs. They're lobbying for more more comprehensive reform that would allow more legitimate high skilled workers into the country, and fewer illegitimate ones. There needs to be a visa for truly high end employees. Facebook probably only hires people in the top 1%, and H-1B lumps them into the same category as people in the 50th percentile.
In the 8 years I've been in Silicon Valley, the prevailing wage for software engineers at top companies has increased by more than 50%. To suggest that there aren't jobs at companies like Facebook and Google and Apple for high-skilled American workers is crazy. How high would our salaries have to rise for you to admit there's a shortage? When we're being paid like professional athletes?
One big flaw in your argument is that the linked studies seem to focus on individual productivity. What about team productivity? I can definitely see myself producing more code if I worked in a more isolated environment, or whatever other metric you'd like to use, but I think my team's overall effectiveness would suffer. Note that we don't work alone in cubicles or closed offices, but at desks in an open environment as is common these days. It's hard for me to imagine a remote work environment -- even with chat and Google video hangouts constantly running -- that could match the free flow of ideas and information that we get from working right next to one another. The distractions to individual productivity are more than compensated for by being more plugged in to what other people are doing, which lets everyone make better decisions that save time in the long run.
I'm not sure why so many people are reacting as though there's a universally superior approach here. All teams and organizations are different. Having employees present at the office seems to work for Google, and presumably Mayer has good reason to think it will work at Yahoo as well. I'm sure there are also lots of big organizations where the opposite is true.
It's spelled "nOOb", nOOb. Back when I joined we had to use smoke signals. Go ahead and try making a puff look like an "e" or a "w".
Oh spare me. They aren't going to turn away a qualified candidate that applies in a conventional way. This is a way for them to get some free publicity and maybe even (heaven forbid) have some fun.
Back in *my* day you actually had to work for your +5 funny posts, not just show up with a low user ID!
Would you argue that intelligence has no bearing on the real world, or that successful competitive programmers aren't highly intelligent? Because your comment implies that you consider one or the other to be true.
No, it's the fourth.
They changed the rules for reference materials starting with last year's contest.
But there really wasn't much point in bringing tons of books anyway. In my experience, for books to be useful in the ACM contest, you have to be thoroughly familiar with them. In addition, very few books present the information in a form that you can use in a program quickly. Most good teams would always prepare their own notes and prewritten code anyway.
It may be that what they really wanted to prevent was people bringing in solutions to hundreds of old contests, just in case there's a Finals problem that's very similar. There are people who have solved thousands of problems on online contest sites like acm.uva.es.
You can see past winners here: http://icpc.baylor.edu/past/default.htm
I know two engineers at Google who dropped out of college and don't have degrees. If you are truly bright and know more about computer science than 99.9% of CS graduates, then I don't think Google cares about your credentials.
Another myth is that you need a Ph.D. to work at Google. I don't know what the ratio is, but they do hire plenty of people without, and did so before the IPO. I suspect the main reason they have so many Ph.D.'s is simply that they hire really smart people, and really smart people are more likely to have one.
If you only have a Bachelor's or Master's and they want to hire you, they'll most likely try to convince you that working at Google may be a better option than pursuing a doctorate. Google employees do get the opportunity to pursue research interests.
If that's the case, don't you think they're looking in the wrong place? I was a finalist last year and also know many of the competitors from other competitions as well. I think more than half of them already have PhD's or are currently working towards one.
Meh. Google likes to hire these potentially "crap programmers", and I think I'll take their word about what makes a good programmer over yours.
The bottom line is that to do well in these kind of competitions, you have to be smart, but also able to implement your ideas quickly and accurately. The latter being a lot less trivial than you make it out to be. I rather doubt many people that smart would have much trouble designing good UIs or writing maintainable code. Problem solving skills are transferrable.
As far as I know, Jimmy already had a job, so no. I'm sure they wanted to hire him though (they'd be crazy not to). I do know of two other finalists who did get hired on full-time, and some of the finalists who are still students got summer internships.
I don't get it. Aren't hours made up of minutes?
Yes. 64M of RAM ought to be enough for anyone.
I know you're joking, but I don't think that's entirely accurate. Titan's atmospheric pressure is only 1.5 times that of Earth. It's definitely no Venus. Here is a page with some info on Titan, including artists renderings that depict a spectacular sky.
Are these rods the size of VWs or something?
No. Rods measure distance, and as far as I know (it's hard to be sure) VW Beetles are a measure of volume.
"My car gets forty hypervelocity rods to the hongshead and that's the way I like it!"
I was one of the 25 finalists. I find your comments most interesting. Please explain to me how they were using us, or what problem we solved for them, because I'm not aware of this. ;)
Why do you study computer science in school if you find it boring?
The problems will have model solutions already prepared beforehand for judging purposes. You don't have to give away anything they don't already know in order to solve the problems.
*cough* bullshit.
Can you cite any examples of what you're talking about? Or at least not post Anonymously if you're going to put forth such allegations?
I've been competing on TC for a year and a half. The closest I've seen to what you describe are a couple of instances where they used problems that had previously been used on ACM ICPC regional contests. However, some of these problems are so simple in concept or well known in the computer science literature that such happenings aren't surprising.
It sounds to me that you just didn't do as well as you liked and are bitter. Chances are these problems that you think were "frequently cavorted between each other" were solved using standard techniques that you were just ignorant of.
I am glad you understand some of most basic and well known ideas of software engineering. But I would have to disagree. I think if someone has the problem solving skills and precision of thought (as one member so nicely put it) to do well at TopCoder, they certainly have the skills to write robust, durable, and re-usable code. I would argue that such concepts are in fact fairly trivial relative to the skills TC emphasizes.
Yes, but it's highly unlikely that such code would be useful. The maximum size of input in TopCoder contests is quite small (a 50x50 array at most). Something like Burrows-Wheeler isn't going to be of much use for that kind of input.