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The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

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Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#51

Post by gwillen »

arcanus wrote: post #41
jacquesm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the money?

Significantly better than academia, of course. I get RSUs, annual bonus, etc. I actually got a fair amount of non-recurring money from patenting activity last year, as well. I suspect I could make more money as a 'pure' software developer, but it would not be a factor of 2. And I'm doing what I love and largely choosing my own research direction. It needs to have an ultimate business application, but finding that ali…

I assume that having gone through academic hell, at least as a grad student so as to get your PhD, is basically a hard requirement to do the sort of thing you do now in industry, though?

As a person without a PhD, my sense is that "research" as a field is Not For Me, even in industry, because the PhD is the critical factor that determines whether one is "researcher material".

Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#52

Post by caminante »

M_Bakhtiari wrote: post #26
eesmith wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you confirm that first statement? That is, when I visited Sweden for a consulting job about 15 years ago, there was definitely a secretary for the group I visited. She helped organize the paperwork for the visit, booked my hotel and taxi, etc. The word for secretary in Swedish is "sekreterare", and a search of the Uppsala University domain find things like https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=y…

> Could you confirm that first statement? Yes, and as you can see from one of the comments below, the same is largely true of neighbouring Norway. > That is, when I visited Sweden for a consulting job about 15 years ago, there was definitely a secretary for the group I visited. She helped organize the paperwork for the visit, booked my hotel and taxi, etc. Notice that I talked about cultural views on secretaries, not…

He's seeking research or data supporting your claims and conclusions, not for you to repeat your claim again.

For example, it would be useful to provide supporting evidence of secretaries declining in numbers/ratios related to cultural preference, not technology advances.

Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#53

Post by canaanical »

gumby wrote: post #19

What they don't tell you is that at the Institute for Advanced Study the poor assistant had to use the same filing cabinet for his list of duties, to do list, and all of Von Neumann's correspondence and papers. While up at Harvard the assistants were given separate cabinets to make their lives easier. But woe betide the poor assistant who tried to put a file in the wrong cabinet!

This is an excellent and under-appreciated joke. Bravo.

Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#54

Post by arcanus »

gwillen wrote: post #51
arcanus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Significantly better than academia, of course. I get RSUs, annual bonus, etc. I actually got a fair amount of non-recurring money from patenting activity last year, as well. I suspect I could make more money as a 'pure' software developer, but it would not be a factor of 2. And I'm doing what I love and largely choosing my own research direction. It needs to have an ultimate business application, but finding that ali…

I assume that having gone through academic hell, at least as a grad student so as to get your PhD, is basically a hard requirement to do the sort of thing you do now in industry, though? As a person without a PhD, my sense is that "research" as a field is Not For Me, even in industry, because the PhD is the critical factor that determines whether one is "researcher material".

Yes, the position I filled explicitly required a PhD. I would be skeptical it would be a good fit for the vast majority of people who do not have a doctorate.

While I certainly would not call it academic hell, getting a PhD was very hard for me. However, while it was hard, I loved it. If you don't love it you probably[1] do not love research, and then you would absolutely hate the day to day.

[1] Probably because many things can make life miserable. A bad adviser being #1. I was lucky to have an absolutely incredible adviser who really helped me through. Of course, the other challenge is the very poor salary. I had a wonderful support network and no college debt so I could survive, and even then it was hard.

Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#55

Post by sg0 »

danieltillett wrote: post #3

The original this is taken from is better [0]. 0. https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/2...

Thanks for sharing this. "Once, after I suggested a problem, he[Frigyes Riesz] he repeated it slowly twice to make certain he understood. Then, absolute silence. After half an hour, he exclaimed "Ja uj. I have it. Yes, I have it.", and he leaned to me, his eyes full of joy and mischief. But that was the end of it. He never made me privy to his solution." - We can learn a lot by working with individuals like these, who sometimes reveal nothing about their method in solving a problem, evoking (mild) stress/frustration upon others until they too solve the problem or at least spend some good time thinking about it.

Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#56

Post by euler_ »

canaanical wrote: post #53
gumby wrote: post #19

What they don't tell you is that at the Institute for Advanced Study the poor assistant had to use the same filing cabinet for his list of duties, to do list, and all of Von Neumann's correspondence and papers. While up at Harvard the assistants were given separate cabinets to make their lives easier. But woe betide the poor assistant who tried to put a file in the wrong cabinet!

This is an excellent and under-appreciated joke. Bravo.

What's the joke?

Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#57

Post by meuk »

danieltillett wrote: post #3

The original this is taken from is better [0]. 0. https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/2...

Nice post. About the article: it must have taken some balls (for lack of a better expression) to turn down the position as von Neumann's assistant.

Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#58

Post by Pica_soO »

jimmy1 wrote: post #36
jacquesm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academia is stuck in the past in that sense. And it is already hurting them in quite a few disciplines where 'being published' is great but trumped by 'being able to afford a normal life'. So it filters out people that are willing to put their lives on hold in order to have their names at the top of a couple of papers. Some of them find that the lives they put on hold can not be put together again after a decade. Gra…

Already hurting them, and has been hurting them for almost a decade, even more at this point. I was thinking about continuing my education to do research in distributed computing, but I learned midway through my undergraduate, majoring in computer science with the "Software Engineering" track, that our field was already playing catchup with industry. I learned this because I worked for a startup my senior year. Their…

My embedded professor waged a little guerilla warfare against the Object Orientated Everything doctrine. Subtle little sentences like- fired mid lecture: "Yes, it helps us programmers, but the compiler has to rip it all out again, to not ruin the cache performance-"

which got us to question other lectures, and find out that the exact truth - depends on the circumstances.

PS: If you strip university down to its basics- its basically society accepted basic income for three/four years - to do whatever you want- if one does not use that, because s/he is chasing some gamified credits in exchange for real credit - is it really fair to blame that on the professors of that institution?

They must teach something, in a field, where half the innovations are basically secret and the other half is outdated the moment you write exams.

So what can you expect from a university?

We learned C/C++/Java.

Object Orientation is still a valid crutch for most programmers, who would otherwise fall back into procedural decay.

Functional programming languages are great, but hard on the novice mind.

Software engineering was one of those courses that are not usefull until you are out in the trenches. Still the Prof had valuable and valid war stories of theire own time in companys and lots of stuff you can find here on HN as advice including:

"He who writes down everything, is the last man standing."

Nobody claimed to have a silver bullet.

Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#60

Post by jimmy1 »

Pica_soO wrote: post #58
jimmy1 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Already hurting them, and has been hurting them for almost a decade, even more at this point. I was thinking about continuing my education to do research in distributed computing, but I learned midway through my undergraduate, majoring in computer science with the "Software Engineering" track, that our field was already playing catchup with industry. I learned this because I worked for a startup my senior year. Their…

My embedded professor waged a little guerilla warfare against the Object Orientated Everything doctrine. Subtle little sentences like- fired mid lecture: "Yes, it helps us programmers, but the compiler has to rip it all out again, to not ruin the cache performance-" which got us to question other lectures, and find out that the exact truth - depends on the circumstances. PS: If you strip university down to its basics…

> PS: If you strip university down to its basics- its basically society accepted basic income for three/four years - to do whatever you want- if one does not use that, because s/he is chasing some gamified credits in exchange for real credit - is it really fair to blame that on the professors of that institution?

I am finding it difficult to unpack this, but the basic assertion that it is some free time for you to explore and figure yourself out -- that's great, if it is on your dime. If it is on someone else's dime, I would hope you would be somewhat a little more responsible with other people's money (That's how we ended up with all those memes about millennials: because there is a little truth in every meme).

Put another way, I worked my ass off delivering pizzas and working doubles on the weekend to pay for my nice state college. I am not trying to state some survivorship bias here, but rather illustrate the point of view you have when you work your literal ass off for every dollar. Spending it wisely then becomes your #1 priority. For all the sweat I put into being graced with the privilege of attending the "prestigious" state college of somewhere, USA, I wasn't about to spend another minute in there than I had to, because I saw waste and uselessness everywhere I turned and because I think I calculated my costs personally -- it came out to something like the rate of 200 dollars an hour per hour of actual education I received there -- That's a pretty nice consulting fee if you ask me.

Honestly these days, I think it's all a big racket, but I have hope for the future generation. These kids going to college now and racking up these student debts that will never be repaid, they are slowly but surely realizing they were duped.

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