Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university • Hacker News Board

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#221

Post by DFtYsLPBHiOpTO5 » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 2:53 AM UTC

55555 wrote: post #211

ganoushoreilly wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can assure you that there are programs with insane skill requirements, many of which have fed the executives and senior Security and IT staff at FAANG. They're not likely being overt about their previous jobs, choosing to instead make them sound less sexy so to speak, but they're 100% there. I would also note that you're over estimating 2nd party contributions to all the above. You're right on the money for math th…

How does the fed pay these programmers more than the normal federal compensation schedule? Is the compensation uncapped if they work through a contractor? If they dont, why do these programmers choose to work there?

If you got a Ph.D. in some field and wanted to do R&D in it without trying to go tenure-track, then the national labs, and occasionally the contractors, used to be a decent compromise. Bell Labs was gone, Google wasn't yet running its moonshot factory, and Softbank had yet to open its pocketbook. Depending where in the country you want to be it still might make a little sense.

But if you're a programmer without a scientific speciality, then there's less reason.

The contractors have some freedom to pay as they see fit -- they pay more than the national labs in my experience -- but they still have to justify their rates to the government during contract negotiations, and the government can push back. The pay is "ok", but has been falling increasingly behind "Tech". So now there's brain drain, particularly among programmers.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#222

Post by sieabahlpark » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 3:00 AM UTC

Avicebron wrote: post #214

maxmalysh wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I filter based on experience. Previous jobs, roles, projects. Degree is a weak predictor and I consider it mostly for candidates with less than 3 years of experience.

I guess my question transitions over to: If a candidate has less than 3 years experience and no degree, where does that fall on your radar? Genuinely curious as it falls into the "need experience to get experience" job meme many people find initially.

He's saying their experience speaks for itself after the 3 year mark. Before that you'd be required for a degree. So it's "employment risk for others, but not for me".

Kind of backward from the original premise that was stated.

I've vetted no degree people with their side projects and how many were actually completed rather than just thought experiments. "Can this person show the drive to finish something when someone isn't telling them to do that?" The complexity of said project and whether they have had an internship.

For someone to get higher than the low bar is to have a proven record of relevant contributions to projects of their own or open source. No "modify some docs" commits but actual end to end features.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#223

Post by perl4ever » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 3:04 AM UTC

55555 wrote: post #211

ganoushoreilly wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can assure you that there are programs with insane skill requirements, many of which have fed the executives and senior Security and IT staff at FAANG. They're not likely being overt about their previous jobs, choosing to instead make them sound less sexy so to speak, but they're 100% there. I would also note that you're over estimating 2nd party contributions to all the above. You're right on the money for math th…

How does the fed pay these programmers more than the normal federal compensation schedule? Is the compensation uncapped if they work through a contractor? If they dont, why do these programmers choose to work there?

I have limited first-hand experience, but yes, contractors can be paid independently of government pay scales as far as I know, and far more than you'd think (in terms of breadth of jobs) is done by contractors. I remember reading that the people who do security clearance investigations largely are, or were, contractors.

My impression is that if you do work directly for federal or state government, you also are likely to be alongside a substantial number of contractors.

Reality Winner was a contractor, by the way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#224

Post by foobiekr » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 3:13 AM UTC

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…

They are the leading bodies for taking credit for it, however.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#225

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 3:26 AM UTC

chillacy wrote: post #140

p1esk wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the dominant public opinion is government agencies are staffed with mediocre engineers. Not even because of any moral concerns, just because of bureaucracy and low pay.

I learned from Snowden's book that the real way to make money working for the government is to quit and become a contractor.

[deleted]

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#226

Post by graeme » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 3:32 AM UTC

knzhou wrote: post #60

brlewis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a school rejects qualified applicants because there are too many, doesn't that indicate a shortage of that kind of school?

No, because school prestige is a positional good. This is like saying you can address the shortage of Olympic gold medals by just manufacturing tons of them.

It’s not obvious this smallness serves any functional purpose. Two (U of T, Mcgill) Canadian schools have extremely good international reputations and serve more than the entire Ivy League. U of T alone educates more than the whole Ivy League.

http://induecourse.ca/the-bottleneck-in-u-s-higher-education...

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#227

Post by plcancel » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 3:36 AM UTC

jkqwzsoo wrote: post #119

Zhenya wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order of ranking and total enrollment (sourced from us news) 1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 3,130 2 Stanford University 3,444 ' 3 University of California--Berkeley 2,337 4 California Institute of Technology 536 5 Carnegie Mellon University 4,112 6 University of Michigan--Ann Arbor 3,247 7 Purdue University--West Lafayette 3,428 8 Georgia Institute of Technology 4,252 9 University of California--San Diego…

These are graduate school enrollment numbers. Without breaking down CS/EE versus most other engineering disciplines, are MS/PhDs the "primary" talent source for the tech industry? For comparison, GATech claims 61% of their students get engineering degrees and an enrollment of 14,142, thus ~8,626 undergraduate engineering students. https://coe.gatech.edu/about/facts-rankings Other school's engineering enrollment: UT A…

I went to Georgia Tech, majored in Architecture, and even I somehow ended up in tech.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#228

Post by randomdata » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 3:38 AM UTC

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

The present day mega billionaires have spent their careers building/funding the technologies to make universities obsolete.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#229

Post by golem14 » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 3:49 AM UTC

mturmon wrote: post #144

pb7 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very odd statement indeed. I have never heard anything even remotely corroborating this. In fact (highly anecdotally, take it as entertainment at best), I have read that public opinion holds NSA's technical capabilities in high esteem but in reality, the talent is vastly below that of the top consumer tech companies because most tech employees would never contribute to the type of work the government does.

I hear you, and appreciate your caveat ("highly anecdotally"). But consider a couple of data points: -- KH-11 satellite, and presumed successors -- Stuxnet -- Utah data center ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center ) -- The rather enormous intelligence budget that allows all kinds of creativity The above indicates that there must be some corners of these agencies that are extremely technically skilled, and…

If Facebook were allowed to stuxnet the hell out of Apple/google/Twitter etc, who knows what would happen:)

I’m not disparaging the nsa etc talent, but it’s very hard to arrive at fair comparisons in this area.

The sec teams at faang are just not tasked with stuff the nsa does.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#230

Post by FrankPetrilli » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 4:46 AM UTC

Avicebron wrote: post #214

maxmalysh wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I filter based on experience. Previous jobs, roles, projects. Degree is a weak predictor and I consider it mostly for candidates with less than 3 years of experience.

I guess my question transitions over to: If a candidate has less than 3 years experience and no degree, where does that fall on your radar? Genuinely curious as it falls into the "need experience to get experience" job meme many people find initially.

Speaking from my perspective as a prolific FAANG interviewer: Listing whatever experience you can (high-school jobs, sites created for friends, college jobs) alongside interesting personal projects is a huge leg up for getting through recruiting. If you're early in your career, find a few small-time jobs somewhere in tech that'll hire you, and learn as much as you can as fast as you can. MSPs are desperate for people with a little coding background. They'll chew you up and spit you out with long hours and terrible pay, but they're a great place to cut your teeth on getting things done.

Once a candidate gets to me as an interviewer, I'm mostly looking at a resume for what topics I should ask about, both things that you're comfortable in, and things that you're not. If you have personal projects, I'll ask pertinent questions about them, and often I've learned some very interesting insights from the personal projects of candidates.

In my time interviewing, I've hired people without degrees as senior engineers and I've rejected people with doctorates in computer science as junior support engineers. Turns out, degrees are a mediocre predictor at best of ability to do a job, and practical experience is 99% of the time more impactful than a piece of paper.