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What explains the growing gap in wages? Computers.

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Re: What explains the growing gap in wages? Computers.

#11

Post by bootload »

lsc wrote: post #5
noelchurchill wrote: post #3

Occasionally someone posts to HN stating they want want to drop out of high school or go straight from high school to working full time. Maybe they should read this first.

eh, I didn't go to college. of course, when I graduated highschool it was 1997, and I had 2 years of paid experience as a sysadmin, so I was able to jump right into a .com job, and I'm a UNIX SysAdmin- a computer janitor. SysAdmins often have less formal education than Developers, so some of this was just that I 'got lucky' - but I do know many others who have done ok without formal education. Yeah, if I had stuck it…

"... SysAdmins often have less formal education than Developers, so some of this was just that I 'got lucky' - but I do know many others who have done ok without formal education. ..."

You could argue SysAdmins with "a bit" of training make high quality developers. Of the best developers I know a lot are from the SysAdmin tree. The one downside of back room work though is it is just ripe for outsourcing. Narrow focus has it's own evolutionary disadvantages and it is "our" doing. This is one thing Phil Greenspun mentioned in JL's "Founders" and another reason startups kick-ass - outsource the management not the engineering.

Re: What explains the growing gap in wages? Computers.

#12

Post by icey »

rw wrote: post #7
lsc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

higher education in the US is heavily subsidised. The meagre fees that the lower colleges charge are waived if you are poor, and at that point all you need to cover is food/books/rent.

I mean more subsidization, so that changing careers is a real option for most people.

I don't think that the problem with changing careers has to do so much with paying for college as it does with paying your bills while you change careers.

Re: What explains the growing gap in wages? Computers.

#13

Post by glomek »

mynameishere wrote: post #8

Far too many people go to college. Most of you went to decent schools, so you're probably not aware that US state schools are literally inundated by federally-subsidized mouth-breathers, who are doomed to drop out and work at Burger King, or get communications degrees and work at Burger King. A high school graduate in the 1960s could earn a middle class income through unskilled labor. This was an historical anomaly,…

> Far too many people go to college.

I am convinced that many people go to college only to become employable, not because they have any academic interest to pursue.

If a high school diploma actually meant that you could read and write and multiply and divide, then maybe there wouldn't be as many jobs out there requiring college degrees when all they really need are the skills you should have learned in high school.

Re: What explains the growing gap in wages? Computers.

#14

Post by lsc »

bootload wrote: post #11
lsc wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eh, I didn't go to college. of course, when I graduated highschool it was 1997, and I had 2 years of paid experience as a sysadmin, so I was able to jump right into a .com job, and I'm a UNIX SysAdmin- a computer janitor. SysAdmins often have less formal education than Developers, so some of this was just that I 'got lucky' - but I do know many others who have done ok without formal education. Yeah, if I had stuck it…

"... SysAdmins often have less formal education than Developers, so some of this was just that I 'got lucky' - but I do know many others who have done ok without formal education. ..." You could argue SysAdmins with "a bit" of training make high quality developers. Of the best developers I know a lot are from the SysAdmin tree. The one downside of back room work though is it is just ripe for outsourcing. Narrow focus…

Yeah. I know some very good developers who were first SysAdmins. Even I have written a patch here and there to various system programs. To 'level up' as a sysadmin, even if you don't want to be a dev, you do need to know some programming. I don't know if I have the attention span to sit down and write a large app from end to end, but many times I've had to hack up the programs a client was using. I once patched courier-imap so my employer could continue to use the same UIDLs

Ugh. nearly all customers were using pop3 like IMAP- 'leave mail on server' the problem was that UIDLS needed to stay the same, (the UIDL value is an identifier of a pop3 message- the pop3 client uses it keep track of what messages are new in the pathalogical 'leave messages on server' scheme. If we changed the UIDLs, all messages would be 'new' to the mail client and customers would scream.) and qpopper UIDLs contain characters that can't be in filenames, while courier-imap's pop3 daemon uses the UIDL for the filename... so I hacked it so that if the filename started with 0x, it treated the filename as a hex-encoded UIDL. (otherwise it acted as normal... that way next time they upgrade the courier server, they probably don't need to include my patch... most of the old 0x mails will be gone in a number of months.) A simple change, but it allowed us to move to maildir (which isn't always faster, but in this case was massively faster) without disturbing the customers. But yeah. as a more senior SysAdmin, you are expected to occasionally deal with that sort of thing. Being able to kindof read debugger output also really helps.

Oh, also the 'got lucky' comment was more about coming of age during the .com boom than about becoming a SysAdmin. The .com boom (and my timing) was luck. Becoming a SysAdmin, well, that was more the 'path of least resistance' at least once I got started down this path.

Re: What explains the growing gap in wages? Computers.

#15

Post by bootload »

lsc wrote: post #14
bootload wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... SysAdmins often have less formal education than Developers, so some of this was just that I 'got lucky' - but I do know many others who have done ok without formal education. ..." You could argue SysAdmins with "a bit" of training make high quality developers. Of the best developers I know a lot are from the SysAdmin tree. The one downside of back room work though is it is just ripe for outsourcing. Narrow focus…

Yeah. I know some very good developers who were first SysAdmins. Even I have written a patch here and there to various system programs. To 'level up' as a sysadmin, even if you don't want to be a dev, you do need to know some programming. I don't know if I have the attention span to sit down and write a large app from end to end, but many times I've had to hack up the programs a client was using. I once patched couri…

"... Ugh. nearly all customers were using pop3 like IMAP- 'leave mail on server' the problem was that UIDLS needed to stay the same, (the UIDL value is an identifier of a pop3 message- the pop3 client uses it keep track of what messages are new in the pathalogical 'leave messages on server' scheme. If we changed the UIDLs, all messages would be 'new' to the mail client and customers would scream.) and qpopper UIDLs contain characters that can't be in filenames, while courier-imap's pop3 daemon uses the UIDL for the filename... ..."

Not write a whole system app but the tools (like "duplo") so other devs can use them without shooting themselves in the foot having to learn or experiment in very specific niches.

Re: What explains the growing gap in wages? Computers.

#16

Post by vlad »

mynameishere wrote: post #8

Far too many people go to college. Most of you went to decent schools, so you're probably not aware that US state schools are literally inundated by federally-subsidized mouth-breathers, who are doomed to drop out and work at Burger King, or get communications degrees and work at Burger King. A high school graduate in the 1960s could earn a middle class income through unskilled labor. This was an historical anomaly,…

Everybody should further their education and reasoning skills, even if a system is not perfect. Secondly, college graduates who work at Burger King later decide to get a Masters or get a job at a good company through a friend or when the job market improves. Such work experience is itself not necessarily bad or demeaning.

Re: What explains the growing gap in wages? Computers.

#17

Post by rw »

icey wrote: post #12
rw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean more subsidization, so that changing careers is a real option for most people.

I don't think that the problem with changing careers has to do so much with paying for college as it does with paying your bills while you change careers.

Can be construed as the same thing.

Re: What explains the growing gap in wages? Computers.

#18

Post by helveticaman »

glomek wrote: post #13
mynameishere wrote: post #8

Far too many people go to college. Most of you went to decent schools, so you're probably not aware that US state schools are literally inundated by federally-subsidized mouth-breathers, who are doomed to drop out and work at Burger King, or get communications degrees and work at Burger King. A high school graduate in the 1960s could earn a middle class income through unskilled labor. This was an historical anomaly,…

> Far too many people go to college. I am convinced that many people go to college only to become employable, not because they have any academic interest to pursue. If a high school diploma actually meant that you could read and write and multiply and divide, then maybe there wouldn't be as many jobs out there requiring college degrees when all they really need are the skills you should have learned in high school.

>I am convinced that many people go to college only to become employable, not because they have any academic interest to pursue.

I know this is true of business schools. B-schools don't really teach anything; they're actually a way to signal to potential employers that you could come up with the 100k and 2 years necessary to go through school, the smarts to get through admissions, the persistence to get through it, and the willingness to absorb bullshit management-speak (meaning you'll be obedient).

Re: What explains the growing gap in wages? Computers.

#19

Post by lupin_sansei »

Why is inequality considered a bad thing? What matters is whether the median wage is falling or not. Better to allow some people to earn massive amounts and have a rising median wage than to focus on inequality and have a stagnant or falling median wage.

It's plainly obvious that people have differing skills, and the whole communist experiment showed that you couldn't motivate people without rewarding them monetarily for their skills, risk and hard work (startups being a good example here).

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