BS. Plenty of socialistic and semi-socialist nations never had that problem. Adam Smith's "comparative advantage" can also result in single-basket syndrome.
The standard of living in the USA is certainly stagnant, and arguably slowly backsliding, but it's not "broken". We are STILL at or near the top of the heap in terms of national power and wealth. Venezuela is a real example of "broken" (because they put all their eggs in the oil basket).
The "break it to start over" suggestion risks losing everything in a bid to try to improve what mostly works. It reminds me of sports teams who come just shy of a championship, and revamp their roster to try to get better next for season, but instead ruin their original chemistry and slide way down in rankings. A lot of teams make that mistake: it fails far more often than it works.
I disagree with your assessment of why T won. T was basically a roll-the-dice choice. Hillary was more or less a known quantity: mostly competent but bland. T presented a chance of being a true reformer but also a chance of being a dud.
It was the pioneering spirit in Americans that made them gamble at the polls. Voters have Captain Orange taking the USA Enterprise into a Strange New Frontier, full well knowing we might find paradise, Borg, and/or be infested with orange tribbles that double as toupees.
T is a casino salesman by trade: he knows how to hype the fun of gambling and exploration, plunging the ship into a dark uncharted nebula.
Let's just hope we don't hear, "Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not an apocalypse reverser!"
These same flappy heads were claiming that Manhattan Island and Florida would be under water by 2000...[that] acid rain will destroy all the trees by 1995. The ozone hole will make it so you can't go outside...
You have to understand that sensationalism sells. The media tends to pick up on extreme claims because those sell papers/eyeball-counts.
If 1 expert makes an extreme claim and 9 others make mellow claims, that 1 is all you (typical reader) actually sees, NOT the other 9. People don't buy papers to read that Plane X landed normally.
You are thus not seeing a representative sample of scientific predictions.
It would be ironic of GOP tries to impeach him out of office, but Dems actually prevent or delay it so that T can finish demolishing GOP and their reputation.
Pence could probably get more of GOP's (traditional) agenda passed than T, which the Dems obviously don't want. T is proving to be an ineffective blabber-mouth (which was predictable in my opinion).
my program in Fortran...had an unfortunate page feed loop [bug]...paper flew out of the old IBM printer and how fast a box of paper was emptied. It happened before you could react to stop it.
In retrospect, it's amazing how much paper the web saves. At the end of an accounting or "reporting" period, say approximately a month depending on the org, giant reports would be printed up with a hierarchical breakdown of whatever was being tracked, sometimes a foot thick. Often multiple copies were printed for different managers and executives. End-of-period report printing resembled a news-paper operation.
The reports allowed managers to see the roll-up of high-level statistics, medium-level statistics, all the way down to "detail" lines with specific transactions, objects, or events per line. It was a simple hierarchy, averaging around say 4 levels, so they were pretty easy for managers to relate to. Trees are bees' knees. (Of course there were always odd domain-specific caveats to deal with, or marketing inventing odd hybrid categories for purposes explained with PHB buzzwords if you asked. But these goofy exceptions are job security.)
And the same info was often printed in at least two ways: by location (such as sales stores and regions), and another report by a category hierarchy, such as product category, somewhat like Amazon's drop-down category menu, but usually with more levels. This allowed managers to compare categories and their changes (trends) to each other.
Often semi-summary and summary versions were also printed, without the detail lines. Some variations compared to several older periods, to monitor longer trends. Of course, these didn't take up nearly as much paper.
Assuming you got clean data and the right tools, these mega-hierarchy reports were fairly straight-forward to program. (Older orgs often had convoluted data sources or structures and needed a lot of data cleaning and adjusting to make it report-able.)
The web-based interactive versions of the same thing are not always so straight-forward, in part because being online gives you more options, such as query-by-example (match criteria) instead of just a hierarchy. They often end up being hybrids between hierarchies and query-by-example, making them potentially more confusing and thus need more feedback and tuning to make them easy for managers to use.
I tend to make such too "meta", with factored abstractions that allows the same concept to bend to multiple needs. But these often confuse users and thus I often have to dumb them down, adding redundancy to make it easier for users to mentally digest. They have to see specifics from their domain, or they wig out.
Less "computer operators" are now needed to manage the online equivalent of the printers and report distribution, but more programmers and DBA's are needed to tune the UI's and databases for interactive reporting.
This reflects a general trend of our economy of more engineering and less "operators" babysitting machines such as command consoles, printers, and physical report distribution. There are fewer "middle-men" between the technology and user, but the flip side is the technology has to be more sophisticated to compensate for lack of intermediaries to help the end-user get their info. The middle is being hollowed out.
But, the web certainly saves paper. Younger managers almost never print out thick hierarchical reports: they expect it to all be online (and exportable to spreadsheets so they can fiddle with it on their own).
"This is the best global warming in the world. It's fantastic global warming! I know warming better than the Sun. Let me tell you, the Sun asks me for advice on heat, even; and the Sun is Yuuuuge on heat. Everyone knows that, I don't have to tell you that. Democrats only talk to black holes and did NOTHING for 8 years. Nothing! Low energy people, really low energy."
"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do I'm half crazy all for the love of you It won't be a stylish marriage I can't afford a carriage But you'll look sweet upon the seat Of a bicycle built for two"
We are not equivalent to doctors. Doctors spend a good deal of time in medical school, and have a licensing board overseeing them. For these reasons, at least, doctors are paid much more on average than developers. (The pay-off has to be good in part to compensate for the time in medical school.)
If you are a good enough coder, you don't even need a degree to be paid fairly well.
It's also difficult to outsource or visa-tize doctors because of the licensing process and their trade union. They have a degree of protection from globalization, unlike coders. A high school dropout in Timbuktu may be coding your fav software at $1.50/hr.
And recessions and trends can rock our profession pretty hard. CA after the dot-com crash was nasty job-wise. People still get sick during slumps; doctors are better protected from economic burps. (Don't get complacent; if our stupid UI 'standards' get fixed, many coders will be dumped, flooding the market, for example.)
As far as the comparison to lawyers, we DON'T want that. Lawyers are not very popular. I've heard a lot of cruel lawyer jokes but not so much about coders, outside of silly people-skills digs.
there is a massive shortage of labor in the construction industry, specifically heavy equipment operators (excavators, backhoes, forklifts, etc).
There's two key issues with those kinds of jobs. For one, they are very recession-sensitive because construction is recession-sensitive. Plus, it takes a fair amount of training and practice to become proficient to operate heavy equipment that could be dangerous if used wrong.
I have a close friend who works for the local electric company. For 5 years, as an apprentice, he worked his ass off...[those jobs] just require determination and sweat.
But there are probably roughly 5 other people competing for that one job. It's a stress-survival contest. "I worked 4 asses off, you only worked 3 off, neener neener!" Thus, the solution doesn't scale. Sure, education is no guarantee either, but it's usually better than 1 in 5.
I don't dispute it does happen. But it's hard to know up front how successful one will be going that route. Statistically, a degree matters per life earning power.
[I was easily in the top 25%] the problem is that you're an asshole, and nobody liked you.
Those with the biggest egos are indeed usually the worse employees. There are exceptions, but they are rare.
If you think you are superior, there's a very good chance you are a jerk and don't know it. I'm just the messenger. (A fantastic messenger, the best, I know messaging, everyone knows it bigly.)
Get out if you can! It's not worth your health and sanity to stay for a bit more money.
I had a sinister boss during a past slump, and had to wait a while to find another company. Economic slumps suck: choices die faster than summer daisies in Death Valley.
Slashdot Mirror
BS. Plenty of socialistic and semi-socialist nations never had that problem. Adam Smith's "comparative advantage" can also result in single-basket syndrome.
American proverb: The nail that sticks out the most gets elected president.
The standard of living in the USA is certainly stagnant, and arguably slowly backsliding, but it's not "broken". We are STILL at or near the top of the heap in terms of national power and wealth. Venezuela is a real example of "broken" (because they put all their eggs in the oil basket).
The "break it to start over" suggestion risks losing everything in a bid to try to improve what mostly works. It reminds me of sports teams who come just shy of a championship, and revamp their roster to try to get better next for season, but instead ruin their original chemistry and slide way down in rankings. A lot of teams make that mistake: it fails far more often than it works.
I disagree with your assessment of why T won. T was basically a roll-the-dice choice. Hillary was more or less a known quantity: mostly competent but bland. T presented a chance of being a true reformer but also a chance of being a dud.
It was the pioneering spirit in Americans that made them gamble at the polls. Voters have Captain Orange taking the USA Enterprise into a Strange New Frontier, full well knowing we might find paradise, Borg, and/or be infested with orange tribbles that double as toupees.
T is a casino salesman by trade: he knows how to hype the fun of gambling and exploration, plunging the ship into a dark uncharted nebula.
Let's just hope we don't hear, "Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not an apocalypse reverser!"
Become a lobbyist instead; it pays well and doesn't go out of style.
You have to understand that sensationalism sells. The media tends to pick up on extreme claims because those sell papers/eyeball-counts.
If 1 expert makes an extreme claim and 9 others make mellow claims, that 1 is all you (typical reader) actually sees, NOT the other 9. People don't buy papers to read that Plane X landed normally.
You are thus not seeing a representative sample of scientific predictions.
GOP may end up hating T more than the Dems.
It would be ironic of GOP tries to impeach him out of office, but Dems actually prevent or delay it so that T can finish demolishing GOP and their reputation.
Pence could probably get more of GOP's (traditional) agenda passed than T, which the Dems obviously don't want. T is proving to be an ineffective blabber-mouth (which was predictable in my opinion).
Buckle up for Mr. Toad's wild orange ride...
Intern: "Just press Ctrl-Z to undo"
slap slap slap
In retrospect, it's amazing how much paper the web saves. At the end of an accounting or "reporting" period, say approximately a month depending on the org, giant reports would be printed up with a hierarchical breakdown of whatever was being tracked, sometimes a foot thick. Often multiple copies were printed for different managers and executives. End-of-period report printing resembled a news-paper operation.
The reports allowed managers to see the roll-up of high-level statistics, medium-level statistics, all the way down to "detail" lines with specific transactions, objects, or events per line. It was a simple hierarchy, averaging around say 4 levels, so they were pretty easy for managers to relate to. Trees are bees' knees. (Of course there were always odd domain-specific caveats to deal with, or marketing inventing odd hybrid categories for purposes explained with PHB buzzwords if you asked. But these goofy exceptions are job security.)
And the same info was often printed in at least two ways: by location (such as sales stores and regions), and another report by a category hierarchy, such as product category, somewhat like Amazon's drop-down category menu, but usually with more levels. This allowed managers to compare categories and their changes (trends) to each other.
Often semi-summary and summary versions were also printed, without the detail lines. Some variations compared to several older periods, to monitor longer trends. Of course, these didn't take up nearly as much paper.
Assuming you got clean data and the right tools, these mega-hierarchy reports were fairly straight-forward to program. (Older orgs often had convoluted data sources or structures and needed a lot of data cleaning and adjusting to make it report-able.)
The web-based interactive versions of the same thing are not always so straight-forward, in part because being online gives you more options, such as query-by-example (match criteria) instead of just a hierarchy. They often end up being hybrids between hierarchies and query-by-example, making them potentially more confusing and thus need more feedback and tuning to make them easy for managers to use.
I tend to make such too "meta", with factored abstractions that allows the same concept to bend to multiple needs. But these often confuse users and thus I often have to dumb them down, adding redundancy to make it easier for users to mentally digest. They have to see specifics from their domain, or they wig out.
Less "computer operators" are now needed to manage the online equivalent of the printers and report distribution, but more programmers and DBA's are needed to tune the UI's and databases for interactive reporting.
This reflects a general trend of our economy of more engineering and less "operators" babysitting machines such as command consoles, printers, and physical report distribution. There are fewer "middle-men" between the technology and user, but the flip side is the technology has to be more sophisticated to compensate for lack of intermediaries to help the end-user get their info. The middle is being hollowed out.
But, the web certainly saves paper. Younger managers almost never print out thick hierarchical reports: they expect it to all be online (and exportable to spreadsheets so they can fiddle with it on their own).
"This is the best global warming in the world. It's fantastic global warming! I know warming better than the Sun. Let me tell you, the Sun asks me for advice on heat, even; and the Sun is Yuuuuge on heat. Everyone knows that, I don't have to tell you that. Democrats only talk to black holes and did NOTHING for 8 years. Nothing! Low energy people, really low energy."
Why didn't Slashdot use the what-could-possibly-go-wrong tag?
"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do
I'm half crazy all for the love of you
It won't be a stylish marriage
I can't afford a carriage
But you'll look sweet upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two"
Provit
We are not equivalent to doctors. Doctors spend a good deal of time in medical school, and have a licensing board overseeing them. For these reasons, at least, doctors are paid much more on average than developers. (The pay-off has to be good in part to compensate for the time in medical school.)
If you are a good enough coder, you don't even need a degree to be paid fairly well.
It's also difficult to outsource or visa-tize doctors because of the licensing process and their trade union. They have a degree of protection from globalization, unlike coders. A high school dropout in Timbuktu may be coding your fav software at $1.50/hr.
And recessions and trends can rock our profession pretty hard. CA after the dot-com crash was nasty job-wise. People still get sick during slumps; doctors are better protected from economic burps. (Don't get complacent; if our stupid UI 'standards' get fixed, many coders will be dumped, flooding the market, for example.)
As far as the comparison to lawyers, we DON'T want that. Lawyers are not very popular. I've heard a lot of cruel lawyer jokes but not so much about coders, outside of silly people-skills digs.
There's two key issues with those kinds of jobs. For one, they are very recession-sensitive because construction is recession-sensitive. Plus, it takes a fair amount of training and practice to become proficient to operate heavy equipment that could be dangerous if used wrong.
But there are probably roughly 5 other people competing for that one job. It's a stress-survival contest. "I worked 4 asses off, you only worked 3 off, neener neener!" Thus, the solution doesn't scale. Sure, education is no guarantee either, but it's usually better than 1 in 5.
I don't dispute it does happen. But it's hard to know up front how successful one will be going that route. Statistically, a degree matters per life earning power.
Seems the size of the paragraph doubles every 2 stories.
Not everybody is cut out for management either. I should know, I'm one. Thus, crawl-up-the-ladder also has limits to many.
Um, I preferred to do a "how you use it" study on mine.
You forgot the ICAF (inauguration crowd adjustment factor). It's the new Dark Energy.
But to stay ahead of automation and cheap-labor-nations there is almost no choice. Non-degree jobs are stagnant or shrinking.
The only bright spot seems to be things like HVAC service and plumbing, but there's only so much room in those.
Somebody beat you to it.
In that case, call the division "Qaranteam"
Those with the biggest egos are indeed usually the worse employees. There are exceptions, but they are rare.
If you think you are superior, there's a very good chance you are a jerk and don't know it. I'm just the messenger. (A fantastic messenger, the best, I know messaging, everyone knows it bigly.)
A Microsoft study showed teens thought Zune was cool.
Get out if you can! It's not worth your health and sanity to stay for a bit more money.
I had a sinister boss during a past slump, and had to wait a while to find another company. Economic slumps suck: choices die faster than summer daisies in Death Valley.