291–300 of 370 posts
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If you'd invested $1000 in Boeing in the early 80's, it'd be worth $200,000 today. Sounds meaningful to me.
What if I invested in Blockbuster instead of Boeing? How much would my $1000 be worth today?
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I guess other than wanting a continuing supply of in-country tech's to hire (as others have touched on), it sort of comes back to the old "give a man a fish" vs "teach him to fish" shenanigans. They could hire a bunch of janitors, who are already employed anyway, and essentially just transfer that $1b directly into their pockets but at the end of the day they're still going to be janitors. By investing that some amou…
This implies that janitor is an inherently inferior job that deserves lower pay. It might be true, but in my opinion an average janitor is more beneficial to society than an average programmer. More to the point though, what happens when a janitor learns to code and gets a coding job? You still need a janitor!
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I guess other than wanting a continuing supply of in-country tech's to hire (as others have touched on), it sort of comes back to the old "give a man a fish" vs "teach him to fish" shenanigans. They could hire a bunch of janitors, who are already employed anyway, and essentially just transfer that $1b directly into their pockets but at the end of the day they're still going to be janitors. By investing that some amou…
If they brought that support staff in-house, wouldn't it be easier to teach them how to fish?
But you make a good point though, with even a fraction of that budget + maybe a little time investment from their staff, they could create some great opportunities for their otherwise non-technical employees.
It's never been easier to get training in all sorts of things, for free. For example, I'm currently taking MIT's 6.002 electronics course because I never learned circuit analysis properly. It's on youtube, it's free, I watch it anytime. There's the Khan Academy, too.
Training often requires other resources besides one-way communication. A professor who only lectured and didn't otherwise interact with students would be a bad, ineffective teacher.
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What if I invested in Blockbuster instead of Boeing? How much would my $1000 be worth today?
If you're not willing to invest because it's risky, that's fair, but if you're also going to complain that those who do are getting something for nothing, then it isn't so fair.
While some of the richest are certainly entrepreneurs, the largest percentage of Forbes 400 are people who got there with OPM, other people's money, like hedge fund managers. Another chunk are heirs like Waltons or Kochs. Did Waltons get something for nothing without any risk? I would say yes, they did.
It's never been easier to get training in all sorts of things, for free. For example, I'm currently taking MIT's 6.002 electronics course because I never learned circuit analysis properly. It's on youtube, it's free, I watch it anytime. There's the Khan Academy, too.
Im learning equity investing, and there seem to be never ending stream of free learning material online. Lectures from the top universities, youtube videos that teach you curious spreadsheet skills, assignments. As a matter of fact you have very few reasons to justify anything these days.
It just comes down to personal motivation.
For all practical purposes these days the cost of learning anything is equal to your monthly internet bill.
Universities need to start focusing on skills instead of general education. Imagine the amount of skills you could learn if you didn't have to take 60 hours of nonsense credits and focus on skills you require. Programming / Networking / Hardware need a new type of University that is similar to Trade colleges but focus primarily on the skills and nothing more. The first 1-2 years could focus on the foundations while t…
I know this is a cliche, but universities (are supposed to) teach you critical thinking as well as social and life skills, not just train you for a specific vocation. Watering down university education is not necessary. If someone wants to focus just on tech skills, they can go to a boot camp. Expanding boot camps so they become multi-year experiences may be a good idea, but they should not be called universities.
I disagree. I think they provide services to customers. Customers decide what the services are for. I suppose some students are very interested in laying a foundation in the liberal arts. Most, in my experience, are more worried about getting their careers started out on the right foot (especially considering all the loans that they are taking out). There is also a nontrivial number of students there for unsupervised extensions on their adolescences, though.
> ...they should not be called universities...
Why not? Is that going to be a regulated word now? What purpose does the distinction serve? We don't look at a degree and think, "Oh! University degree! This is a well-rounded person with a good foundation in the liberal arts!" No, we see, B.S. in Communications from Boise State and draw inferences from there.
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Counterpoint: The amount of programmers needed is rising across the globe. Every country is going to try to retain its IT talent. In a cut-throat globally competitive world you can't afford to be the country that lets its best minds leave to greener pastures. Also, programming isn't the sort of job where you can fake your way through. If new people are trained up to enter the field they'll need to skills to match. As…
> Also, programming isn't the sort of job where you can fake your way through. Not sure why you think programming would be special in that regard. In a lot of companies, you will be able to keep your badly done job for a really long time as long as you have a good bond with your higher-ups. This goes for programming the same as sales or any other profession.
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They aren't doing this for charity - they are doing it to ensure a steady supply of technical hires. Technical jobs are profit centers; non-technical contracted services are cost centers.
They are getting tons of apps from top schools like harvard, stanford, etc. I don't think they will have any problem hiring people. Maybe this would help some small company a lot more that can't afford pay google salaries. Also If you believe the Pareto principle most of people at google probably aren't that important to their successes.
The people from top schools are in high demand, and Google no longer has monopoly on cool tech workspaces with free lunches and random expensive perks.
They have plenty of openings and they harass qualified people trying to poach them just as hard as everyone else. And since they actually DO have some unique challenges, they sometimes actually DO need people who know more than Rails CRUD apps, which makes things even trickier.
Everyone hates a cynic so bring on the downvotes: I'm going to warn everyone of what's coming. Software engineer jobs will be blue collar, $40-$60k a year jobs, by 2030. The HUGE push from government, and private business, to fill the PERCEIVED lack of engineers, will come to fruition around that time. Make no mistake about it - there is NOT a lack of skilled engineers right now. There is a disinterest among business…
How does flooding the market with more developers who can't pass their interviews help them lower salaries?