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Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

businessinsider.com

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Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#191

Post by sharadov »

Upvoter33 wrote: post #45

"Palo Alto-based Stanford University ... and MIT have historically been the primary talent pools for the tech industry" This is far from true. If you look at the total workforce in tech, the majority is by far from much larger, public schools, like Berkeley, Michigan, Illinois, Washington, Texas, Wisconsin, etc., etc. MIT and Stanford have had amazing great people, but they are far from the "primary" source of talent…

Laughable, because a large number of tech workers in SV are from India, and a large percentage get their undergrad degrees in India, most come here for Masters degrees, but a majority go to engineering schools all over the US.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#192

Post by hindsightbias »

vsskanth wrote: post #3

I've always wondered why mega billionaires from this era such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg etc. haven't built universities like Stanford, Duke, Cornell etc. - all started by monopolists from the previous era. I guess Eric Schmidt would be the first one

Olin is pretty recent but came from an older trust, less than 1/2 a billion I think.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#193

Post by sebastianconcpt »

1. What guarantees does it offer for ideology neutrality? 2. What guarantees does it offer for the diversity of ideas? 3. What guarantees does it offer for excluding censorship of the expression of thought as a measurable true defense of freedom of thought and expression?

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#194

Post by tehlike »

dumdaar wrote: post #187
tehlike wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on who you ask. The general us population owes its army their way of life, quality of life, and wealth.

>quality of life, and wealth. Can you elaborate more on how invasion of Iraq helped in increasing quality of life for an average citizen?

Try not to pick on specific instances for the sake of argument. US military power and it's geopolitical position, combined with a bunch of other things made dollar the reserve currency. Fed is printing money yet there is no inflation except asset inflation. Noone can threaten us military, hence we will be for foreseeable future the country people will pour money on.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#195

Post by tootahe45 »

curiousllama wrote: post #118
bsanr2 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if you may be discounting the value of a pipeline that's presumably going to be substantially less expensive than going to a private university. Perhaps one of the goals here is to flood the government tech sector with new personnel who have been indoctrinated to expect a certain culture, in such a way that the existing structure won't be able to resist changing. If you and your entire cohort have an n-year…

This is a very good point. A university to transition Business Analysts into junior data scientists or HR reps into HR analysts, train managers in tech fundamentals, and upskill SWEs in security or new tech would be SUPER valuable.

Its called the internet. This new tech even enables you to learn things as you need to, often for free, instead of packing in 4 years of stuff then trying to remember it later.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#196

Post by fock »

tehlike wrote: post #186
fock wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, did adtech change the available income or why is it that it's so much bigger than the old way of doing advertisement? I think the only point, why you are seeing this "growth" is that you have an oligopolic structure which is just skimming money (mainly to the benefit of the 0.1 percenters) without creating any additional value compared to the traditional way of doing advertising? Or how again are you increasing…

Plenty of (say, gaming, entertainment etc) companies in developing countries employed plenty of people due to advertising revenue, which would otherwise not be viable. Google display ads takes a fraction of revenue and passes the rest to publishers. Same with audience network. Digital advertising lowered the barrier significantly to making profit for lots of digital businesses. It enabled lots of physical businesses…

Why not pay them directly in a functioning economy, if its worth it? Why do you need to skim from random (!) other ventures to finance this kind of business?

I'm also not sure, if I understand this correctly, but 32% (or 1 third) seems like quite a big "cut" for any service to me - but apparently ratios changed with the internet which allows placing these ads at such a low cost :) https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en

So, do these "digital businesses" create anything, or just skim money? Just because you've built a network of rent-seekers, this doesn't really change the concept.

Also could you explain how physical businesses actually benefit from the "new kind of ads" in a more concise way compared to the weasel-wording "one way or the other" - is more product sold because of ads in a certain area (doubtful, because ads won't change available income), does the percentage of advertising spend go down, when all business go "online" (doubtful as well, or how can you generate growth beyond the growth of the economy, which is the declared target of most adtechy-enterprises?!). So this is frankly neither clear to me nor apparently to you (nor anybody else I suppose), but these are the hard questions society has to answer, before accepting "adtech" as a productive sector of the economy.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#197

Post by refurb »

mbesto wrote: post #178
ghaff wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's literally true. Given sufficient money: - Desired faculty: We'll triple your salary and hire your spouse too. Oh, and give you unprecedented freedom. - Desired students: Free tuition and board and a great campus environment. At the least you could jump-start a pretty darned interesting educational institution at least within a certain focus. But I'm not sure the money is realistic, at least at a s…

Look at this way - if you're going to send your son/daughter to a university and you're trying to decide between MIT and Bezos University (all things else considered equal). Which one is more risky? It's a no brainer. Not to mention many of these tech "gods" notoriously scrap projects when they don't work out in a short term timeframe. There's just very little reason not to send your child to a prestigious university…

This is a great point. One reason why college is so popular is because it’s a low risk way of improving your profile.

The chances of people not knowing what MIT is or their reputation going down is very low. And that’s a big reason why people want to go there.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#198

Post by wslack »

Jtsummers wrote: post #101
jayparth wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... "The Department of Innovative Technology" is kind of what the USDS is. It's ran by very competent people, and do short "tours of duty" with competent SV engineers instead of long-term, safe, bureaucratic jobs. Here's a podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvXN7fRTVds I think you're misinformed on the topic, but that's OK. I assumed it was a typical government agency until I got further information, and…

I'll reiterate my point from another post: It is not a lack of talent, it is a lack of good governance/administration that causes most software/IT failures for the government. USDS is actually pretty cool, and they seem to be doing really great work. But they're a small part of the system. In order to actually improve software/IT within the government we need to fix a lot of small problems. Here are some more: Just t…

This sort of thing is exactly what USDS works against. However, it won't be solved until federal agencies hire on people with the skillset to effectively manage technology.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#199

Post by wslack »

zjaffee wrote: post #148
zazerbayev wrote: post #141

I think this is a great idea. You must ask yourself why the government is able to retain word-class managers and jurists despite stiff competition from the private sector. James Comey was an executive at the world's largest hedge fund, why did he quit for a government job where he was making 100x less? Any federal judge could've made a fortune in corporate law, why didn't they choose to? Because there is a sense of p…

I think it's more complicated than that, all of these roles come with substantial amounts of near unilateral executive power that can impact the way the country is run for decades to come. Even all of the existing US government tech posts like the USDS and 18F are ultimately there purely to service the needs of a bureaucratic agency and their particular management. For a technology specific role to have the same leve…

I'd just push back - technology is a tool to accomplish the missions of government.

The positions that run those missions - enforcing the law, ruling on the law, running Medicare, etc etc - should be more prestigious. That said, if the government wants to have prestigious technical work, it should be more open to taking big swings (in an agile way) on hard problems, but that requires investment and taking risks.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#200

Post by wslack »

kxyvr wrote: post #105
duxup wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a couple departments (including the NSA) complaining about the federal cap when it came to some IT projects, so I'm not sure it is a sure deal to get past that cap. The VA is a whole other land of bureaucracy that plays by its own rules.

Oh, I very much agree and they were most certainly capped at that organization. It's a major problem because and I very much agree with your original comment that there are better options now working for big tech. I guess my point above is that feds can fix this if they truly wanted to. There's precedent for them hiring people for far more money than the regular GS rate when they need to. It would be impossible to hi…

This isn't a decision that can be made within the executive branch (I think). Congress would have to pass laws that enable "bureaucrats to get paid more."
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