I know this is a trendy view to take, but I can assure you that when it comes to applying to graduate programs and, for that matter, applying for certain McJobs, an engineering degree from MIT is going to count for more than an engineering degree from Football State U.
Re:You are of no value to the company, you're a to
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IT Job Hiring Slumps
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You are a fscking moron for the comment you made to the other person.
What was moronic about it? The poster claimed he will only be able to command 35-40% of his previous salary when he finds a new job. Presumably his productivity will stay roughly constant, assuming he stays in the same industry. So the "market value" of all that he brings to the table is actually 35-40% of what his previous employer was paying him. Ergo his previous employer was overpaying him. If I can buy an identical car from two dealers, A and B, and they provide equivalent customer service, have identical policies, are equally convenient, etc., but A charges N and B charges N + $1000, then buying from B is "overpaying". Likewise if I can hire either A or B to perform a given task and A and B are such that they'll perform it equally well, but B costs 35-40% more than A, then hiring B is "overpaying" to have that task completed.
Many of us have been laid-off as a cost-reduction strategy by short-sighted management.
It may well be that your layoff was shortsighted. But how do you know? Is it possible the layoff was, in fact, the right move to make with respect to the business's short-term and long-term success?
My salary has been on a steady decline for the past decade as a consequence of these "thought leaders" and "best and brightest."
If your salary has steadily declined then it's because your skill set has become comparatively less valuable over time. That's likely the result of a whole host of factors, and isn't necessarily caused by the employers in your industry acting contrary to their own self-interest (i.e. being short-sighted).
With over 2 decades professional experience and currently unemployed I feel as though I made a terrible mistake pursuing a career in many roles within IT.
It is entirely possible you have, in fact, made a terrible mistake. And I don't say that to be mean. It absolutely sucks. But it is what it is. If I were in your shoes, the main question I'd be asking myself (and I'm sure you are) is: what can I do about it? Unless it's reasonable to expect that the trend will reverse, and it probably isn't, then it may be time to consider switching career tracks. Or, alternately, relocating to someplace your skill set is in higher demand. Obviously both of those are more easily said than done, but they're not impossible.
Re:You are of no value to the company, you're a to
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IT Job Hiring Slumps
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We're defining "overpaid" differently. If an employer lets Joe go, who was earning N, and hires Bob for M, who is just as productive as Joe, then Joe was overpaid if M N. The employer was paying Joe more than necessary to acquire his labor output.
Re:You are of no value to the company, you're a to
on
IT Job Hiring Slumps
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· Score: 1
Not redundant. "Obvious" perhaps. I'm not familiar with the situation in Australia, but I'd be surprised if you weren't exaggerating the 35-40% figure. If only because if it were true then I'd expect your employer to have laid you of earlier than they did. For instance, when the potential savings were 20% instead of 35-40%. Though it's entirely possible they're just incompetent.
Re:You are of no value to the company, you're a to
on
IT Job Hiring Slumps
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· Score: 1
I'm estimating a 35 -> 45% pay drop from the job I've just been given the heave ho-from to my next one
If this is accurate, then it sounds like your former employer was massively overpaying you and was smart to let you go. They can hire a new you for 35-40% less.
Our country is demonstrably not better off with them
I don't cede this point. Nor would the majority of those who actually study and think about this stuff.
Re:bringing in more H1Bs will solve this problem
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IT Job Hiring Slumps
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The age-old fallacy that what specifics you teach people has any correlation to their future careers. If you're a programmer, the language does not matter.
I'd like to push back against this. I'll agree that the specifics of what one learns in university, assuming we're talking about someone who got a Math/Physics/CS/Engineering degree, likely aren't predictive of long-term career success. That said, subject matter can be decently predictive in terms of short-term success. If I'm looking to hire a junior Java developer, say, and I have two candidates in front of me who appear to be equally hard-working, intelligent, sociable, etc. but one exhibits high Java proficiency and the other has never seen a line of Java then I'm going with the former. Your skill set does matter when it comes to getting a job. Your point is that anybody who's a decent dev. can ramp up on almost any technology. I agree. But not every employer is willing to pay for the lag-time for you to ramp up. Especially if you're competing with other candidates who are already ramped up.
Re:bringing in more H1Bs will solve this problem
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IT Job Hiring Slumps
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· Score: 2
You two seem to be using different definitions of "rigorous". He's using it in terms of mathematical rigor. You're using it to describe things that are tricky and difficult and where there's little margin for error.
All job markets are local. I don't care so much about what the top-line number is for IT jobs. I care about what the market is for my specific skill set in the area where I happen to live. Obviously if the national number plummets then that trend will eventually be replicated in the majority of individual markets, but from the summary of this article it doesn't sound like we're talking about the number "plummeting".
At the moment, for my specific skill set and in the specific area where I live, the job market is about as good as its ever been. If I were to lose my job tomorrow my chances of acquiring another one reasonably quickly would be better than during any of the other times I've been jobless.
The fact that they are consistently 14% higher than your measured usage should have tipped you off that they're not just making numbers up, but measuring some sort of overhead you're not privy to. You're not ever going to get them to bill you like you want to be billed, since whatever they're doing is something they're doing for all their customers. I doubt their systems are set up to allow automatic scaling of certain users' bandwidth by some factor (e.g. 0.85). So if you can't live with the extra 14% I suggest moving to another network provider.
You seem to be focusing on the "men are different" argument. For sake of argument, I'll grant you that. It may be that women will never make up 50% of software developers and engineers. But, as you admit, we can try to modify the social / cultural landscape in such a way as to maximize women's interest in these fields. Whether or not that's a wise thing to do is a separate argument, but the prevailing wisdom is that maximizing the % of the population (both male in female) in "innovation-driving" professions increases overall prosperity.
Two things I'd point out: first, that women's interest in these fields has not always been at the current (low) level. Second, that women's interest in these fields is higher (than the U.S. level) in certain other countries. It may be that the female interest level in those countries is the highest we can possibly hope for given the (alleged) cognitive differences between men and women. But even if that's the case, there's still room to improve in the U.S. I'll recommend this academic paper out of Carnegie Melon. Table 13-1 is interesting.
The global reputation of U.S. tech may have been damaged by the NSA debacle, but only at the margins. Plenty of people still using Gmail, Facebook, buying Oracle crap, etc. Plus "Tech" is more than cloud services and software. Tesla, for instance. Get more people into STEM and maybe you get more Teslas. Or whatever other science/engineering success story you care to cite if you don't consider Tesla to be a good example.
And you're not listening to me. Maybe if I used all caps instead? I acknowledge that men and women, at the aggregate level, have different interest. I'll even cede that they may be partly due to physiology. Will you cede that they may be partly due to social factors and that those social factors may in fact be mutable?
My job in software dev. is plenty interactive. And you're arguing against something I haven't said. Perceptions of fields can and have changed, leading to people's preferences changing. If perception change can be brought about intentionally then, from the standpoint of national competitiveness, maybe it's something we should consider.
In other words the change is explained by something other than biology. That makes my point. To your explanation, though, I'm not convinced that C.S. was relatively less discriminatory than other fields in 1984 that have since become less discriminatory and caused C.S. to lose its relative advantage. We'd need to look at which fields the women who would have been academically suited to study C.S. in 1984 are now entering at higher rates than they did in 1984.
Speaking purely anecdotally, all the women I've worked with in software development have been above average in terms of how hard they work. Some of them have been very competent; some (very much) less so. But none of them were slackers.
A larger and stronger STEM workforce is seen, rightly or wrongly, to be a driver of economic growth in a way plumbers and truckers aren't. The thinking is that if we had more people interested in and capable of being successful in STEM careers that it would increase everyone's prosperity. Better to be a nation of engineers and programmers than a nation of plumbers and truckers, the theory goes. To that end, if women are "turned off" by STEM and choose to pursue other careers and if that can be changed then, in theory, changing that perception and getting more women into the field would be a good thing from the point of view of making the U.S. more globally competitive.
Lawyers and non-research doctors are basically overhead. You need them for society to function at an acceptably high level, but they don't really drive innovation. For that you need STEM guys and some management glue to organize them and turn the innovative vision into reality. More STEM guys (and/or gals) = more innovation = greater national prosperity.
That it's the result of preferences and not overt discrimination doesn't necessarily argue against efforts to change the cultural perception of STEM such that it's more attractive to women.
Attitudes toward professions change over time. If you go far enough back most secondary school teachers were men. We may never reach complete gender balance in STEM, and I am 100% okay with that. That said, to the extent the imbalance is the result of mutable cultural phenomena it may be worth attempting to modify them such that women begin to prefer STEM careers at a higher rate than they do now.
What I would like to see is a statistical comparison of students, male and female, who, as high school seniors, score approximately the same on the SAT, and at levels that representative of folks who later enter STEM careers. So maybe we compare the set of students who score 750+ on Math and between 600 and 650 on verbal. Limiting the verbal range at both the high and low ends is intentional; perhaps a student who scores extremely high in both math and verbal may be more drawn to careers that benefit more from verbal ability. So we take this set of students, divide them into male and females, then check back in six years and see which degrees they end up with.
For instance, this might answer questions like, "To what extent is the gender gap in STEM degrees caused by differing levels of aptitude and to what extent is it simply a result of preference?" We'd be comparing students with similar ability and aptitude. At least, to the extent a blunt instrument like the SAT is a valid proxy for ability and aptitude. What degrees do highly mathematically gifted and somewhat verbally gifted women actually pursue? What about men who are similarly gifted in both areas?
Stop trying to turn it into a fucking social issue, its a god damn evolution issue.
Then we would expect to see very little variation from country to country in terms of male vs. female interest in STEM careers, right? Is that the case? It may be the case there there are physiological differences between men and women on an aggregate level that give rise to some of the gender disparity, but you're an idiot if you don't think social issues also play a part. For instance, if it's all physiological then why was women's participation in computer science higher in 1984 than it is today?
In terms of forcing someone to learn something, at least at the high school level, the argument is that it's sometimes good for kids to learn some things even when they don't want to. I may not think that's true for the specific case of computer science, but that's the argument being made. It's the same reason everybody who attends secondary school in the U.S. is forced to take English, some science, some math, some history, etc., even if they're wholly uninterested in one of those subjects.
With respect to why we might want to break down cultural taboos that keep women out of STEM fields, it might be because doing so could potentially both increase the quality of the U.S. STEM workforce and/or allow it to increase in size. If one half of your population opts out of a given profession then that shrinks the pool of potential talent.
Slashdot Mirror
I know this is a trendy view to take, but I can assure you that when it comes to applying to graduate programs and, for that matter, applying for certain McJobs, an engineering degree from MIT is going to count for more than an engineering degree from Football State U.
What was moronic about it? The poster claimed he will only be able to command 35-40% of his previous salary when he finds a new job. Presumably his productivity will stay roughly constant, assuming he stays in the same industry. So the "market value" of all that he brings to the table is actually 35-40% of what his previous employer was paying him. Ergo his previous employer was overpaying him. If I can buy an identical car from two dealers, A and B, and they provide equivalent customer service, have identical policies, are equally convenient, etc., but A charges N and B charges N + $1000, then buying from B is "overpaying". Likewise if I can hire either A or B to perform a given task and A and B are such that they'll perform it equally well, but B costs 35-40% more than A, then hiring B is "overpaying" to have that task completed.
It may well be that your layoff was shortsighted. But how do you know? Is it possible the layoff was, in fact, the right move to make with respect to the business's short-term and long-term success?
If your salary has steadily declined then it's because your skill set has become comparatively less valuable over time. That's likely the result of a whole host of factors, and isn't necessarily caused by the employers in your industry acting contrary to their own self-interest (i.e. being short-sighted).
It is entirely possible you have, in fact, made a terrible mistake. And I don't say that to be mean. It absolutely sucks. But it is what it is. If I were in your shoes, the main question I'd be asking myself (and I'm sure you are) is: what can I do about it? Unless it's reasonable to expect that the trend will reverse, and it probably isn't, then it may be time to consider switching career tracks. Or, alternately, relocating to someplace your skill set is in higher demand. Obviously both of those are more easily said than done, but they're not impossible.
We're defining "overpaid" differently. If an employer lets Joe go, who was earning N, and hires Bob for M, who is just as productive as Joe, then Joe was overpaid if M N. The employer was paying Joe more than necessary to acquire his labor output.
Not redundant. "Obvious" perhaps. I'm not familiar with the situation in Australia, but I'd be surprised if you weren't exaggerating the 35-40% figure. If only because if it were true then I'd expect your employer to have laid you of earlier than they did. For instance, when the potential savings were 20% instead of 35-40%. Though it's entirely possible they're just incompetent.
If this is accurate, then it sounds like your former employer was massively overpaying you and was smart to let you go. They can hire a new you for 35-40% less.
I don't cede this point. Nor would the majority of those who actually study and think about this stuff.
I'd like to push back against this. I'll agree that the specifics of what one learns in university, assuming we're talking about someone who got a Math/Physics/CS/Engineering degree, likely aren't predictive of long-term career success. That said, subject matter can be decently predictive in terms of short-term success. If I'm looking to hire a junior Java developer, say, and I have two candidates in front of me who appear to be equally hard-working, intelligent, sociable, etc. but one exhibits high Java proficiency and the other has never seen a line of Java then I'm going with the former. Your skill set does matter when it comes to getting a job. Your point is that anybody who's a decent dev. can ramp up on almost any technology. I agree. But not every employer is willing to pay for the lag-time for you to ramp up. Especially if you're competing with other candidates who are already ramped up.
You two seem to be using different definitions of "rigorous". He's using it in terms of mathematical rigor. You're using it to describe things that are tricky and difficult and where there's little margin for error.
All job markets are local. I don't care so much about what the top-line number is for IT jobs. I care about what the market is for my specific skill set in the area where I happen to live. Obviously if the national number plummets then that trend will eventually be replicated in the majority of individual markets, but from the summary of this article it doesn't sound like we're talking about the number "plummeting".
At the moment, for my specific skill set and in the specific area where I live, the job market is about as good as its ever been. If I were to lose my job tomorrow my chances of acquiring another one reasonably quickly would be better than during any of the other times I've been jobless.
Aliens.
Automata.
The fact that they are consistently 14% higher than your measured usage should have tipped you off that they're not just making numbers up, but measuring some sort of overhead you're not privy to. You're not ever going to get them to bill you like you want to be billed, since whatever they're doing is something they're doing for all their customers. I doubt their systems are set up to allow automatic scaling of certain users' bandwidth by some factor (e.g. 0.85). So if you can't live with the extra 14% I suggest moving to another network provider.
You seem to be focusing on the "men are different" argument. For sake of argument, I'll grant you that. It may be that women will never make up 50% of software developers and engineers. But, as you admit, we can try to modify the social / cultural landscape in such a way as to maximize women's interest in these fields. Whether or not that's a wise thing to do is a separate argument, but the prevailing wisdom is that maximizing the % of the population (both male in female) in "innovation-driving" professions increases overall prosperity.
Two things I'd point out: first, that women's interest in these fields has not always been at the current (low) level. Second, that women's interest in these fields is higher (than the U.S. level) in certain other countries. It may be that the female interest level in those countries is the highest we can possibly hope for given the (alleged) cognitive differences between men and women. But even if that's the case, there's still room to improve in the U.S. I'll recommend this academic paper out of Carnegie Melon. Table 13-1 is interesting.
The global reputation of U.S. tech may have been damaged by the NSA debacle, but only at the margins. Plenty of people still using Gmail, Facebook, buying Oracle crap, etc. Plus "Tech" is more than cloud services and software. Tesla, for instance. Get more people into STEM and maybe you get more Teslas. Or whatever other science/engineering success story you care to cite if you don't consider Tesla to be a good example.
And you're not listening to me. Maybe if I used all caps instead? I acknowledge that men and women, at the aggregate level, have different interest. I'll even cede that they may be partly due to physiology. Will you cede that they may be partly due to social factors and that those social factors may in fact be mutable?
One can argue in favor of efforts to increase interest in STEM careers among women and girls without "blaming white men" for anything.
My job in software dev. is plenty interactive. And you're arguing against something I haven't said. Perceptions of fields can and have changed, leading to people's preferences changing. If perception change can be brought about intentionally then, from the standpoint of national competitiveness, maybe it's something we should consider.
In other words the change is explained by something other than biology. That makes my point. To your explanation, though, I'm not convinced that C.S. was relatively less discriminatory than other fields in 1984 that have since become less discriminatory and caused C.S. to lose its relative advantage. We'd need to look at which fields the women who would have been academically suited to study C.S. in 1984 are now entering at higher rates than they did in 1984.
Speaking purely anecdotally, all the women I've worked with in software development have been above average in terms of how hard they work. Some of them have been very competent; some (very much) less so. But none of them were slackers.
A larger and stronger STEM workforce is seen, rightly or wrongly, to be a driver of economic growth in a way plumbers and truckers aren't. The thinking is that if we had more people interested in and capable of being successful in STEM careers that it would increase everyone's prosperity. Better to be a nation of engineers and programmers than a nation of plumbers and truckers, the theory goes. To that end, if women are "turned off" by STEM and choose to pursue other careers and if that can be changed then, in theory, changing that perception and getting more women into the field would be a good thing from the point of view of making the U.S. more globally competitive.
Lawyers and non-research doctors are basically overhead. You need them for society to function at an acceptably high level, but they don't really drive innovation. For that you need STEM guys and some management glue to organize them and turn the innovative vision into reality. More STEM guys (and/or gals) = more innovation = greater national prosperity.
I bet you get a lot of dates.
That it's the result of preferences and not overt discrimination doesn't necessarily argue against efforts to change the cultural perception of STEM such that it's more attractive to women.
Attitudes toward professions change over time. If you go far enough back most secondary school teachers were men. We may never reach complete gender balance in STEM, and I am 100% okay with that. That said, to the extent the imbalance is the result of mutable cultural phenomena it may be worth attempting to modify them such that women begin to prefer STEM careers at a higher rate than they do now.
What I would like to see is a statistical comparison of students, male and female, who, as high school seniors, score approximately the same on the SAT, and at levels that representative of folks who later enter STEM careers. So maybe we compare the set of students who score 750+ on Math and between 600 and 650 on verbal. Limiting the verbal range at both the high and low ends is intentional; perhaps a student who scores extremely high in both math and verbal may be more drawn to careers that benefit more from verbal ability. So we take this set of students, divide them into male and females, then check back in six years and see which degrees they end up with.
For instance, this might answer questions like, "To what extent is the gender gap in STEM degrees caused by differing levels of aptitude and to what extent is it simply a result of preference?" We'd be comparing students with similar ability and aptitude. At least, to the extent a blunt instrument like the SAT is a valid proxy for ability and aptitude. What degrees do highly mathematically gifted and somewhat verbally gifted women actually pursue? What about men who are similarly gifted in both areas?
Then we would expect to see very little variation from country to country in terms of male vs. female interest in STEM careers, right? Is that the case? It may be the case there there are physiological differences between men and women on an aggregate level that give rise to some of the gender disparity, but you're an idiot if you don't think social issues also play a part. For instance, if it's all physiological then why was women's participation in computer science higher in 1984 than it is today?
In terms of forcing someone to learn something, at least at the high school level, the argument is that it's sometimes good for kids to learn some things even when they don't want to. I may not think that's true for the specific case of computer science, but that's the argument being made. It's the same reason everybody who attends secondary school in the U.S. is forced to take English, some science, some math, some history, etc., even if they're wholly uninterested in one of those subjects.
With respect to why we might want to break down cultural taboos that keep women out of STEM fields, it might be because doing so could potentially both increase the quality of the U.S. STEM workforce and/or allow it to increase in size. If one half of your population opts out of a given profession then that shrinks the pool of potential talent.