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Programmers' Day

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Re: Programmers' Day

#51

Post by mendocino »

spiralganglion wrote: post #20
AngryParsley wrote: post #17

Degrees in computer science and computer engineering are in the top 10 for average earnings. We get to build all kinds of cool stuff used by people around the world. For many of us, programming is fun . And we get paid to do it! Every day is programmer's day.

Some interesting data I pulled together today: Approximate revenue-per-employee. Data from Wolfram Alpha and Wikipedia. Apple makes $2,000,000 per employee. Facebook makes $1,500,000. Google makes $1,000,000. Microsoft makes $800,000. Sony makes $500,000. Kraft makes $400,000. Walmart makes $200,000. McDonalds makes $60,000. Now, if only there was a good source of users-per-engineer. I read that Facebook is somewhere…

> Apple makes $2,000,000 per employee.

Most of their employees are not engineers, but work in retail. Which makes it a bit of an odd case among the other tech companies :)

Re: Programmers' Day

#52

Post by MikeMacMan »

smiler wrote: post #42
spiralganglion wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some interesting data I pulled together today: Approximate revenue-per-employee. Data from Wolfram Alpha and Wikipedia. Apple makes $2,000,000 per employee. Facebook makes $1,500,000. Google makes $1,000,000. Microsoft makes $800,000. Sony makes $500,000. Kraft makes $400,000. Walmart makes $200,000. McDonalds makes $60,000. Now, if only there was a good source of users-per-engineer. I read that Facebook is somewhere…

Of course, these are interesting and great numbers, but I don't think that they are the only measure of value. McDonalds may make 'only' $60,000 per employee, but it employs over 1.5 million people . I'm grateful that McDs are providing jobs for those who need them. They also of course offer opportunities for people to own franchises and run their 'own' businesses

The 1.5 million you cite includes franchised employees, while the 60K revenue/employee number does not.

Re: Programmers' Day

#54

Post by hugh3 »

atomicdog wrote: post #40

Can you imagine "programmer's day" being officially recognized in a western society such as the US or the UK? Over here, intellectual pursuits such as programming are effectively spat upon.

"Effectively spat upon", really?

The reason Programmer's Day will never be a thing here is that programming is a low-risk, well-paid, white-collar professional occupation like many others. Nothing special about it, and we don't have a lawyer's day or an actuary's day or a guy who designs the machine that makes tiles for bathrooms day.

Re: Programmers' Day

#56

Post by hugh3 »

cgarvey wrote: post #46

"...the color white was chosen because it represents a hex number with the largest value in a 24-bit red green blue (RGB) color space: 0xFFFFFF, so programmers worldwide wear white in celebration." Only Programmers would have a holiday in which we wear white after labor day to celebrate.

Just remember to take a spare shirt, for after you spill your breakfast burrito on the first one.

Re: Programmers' Day

#57

Post by hugh3 »

cgarvey wrote: post #46

"...the color white was chosen because it represents a hex number with the largest value in a 24-bit red green blue (RGB) color space: 0xFFFFFF, so programmers worldwide wear white in celebration." Only Programmers would have a holiday in which we wear white after labor day to celebrate.

Just remember to take a spare shirt, for after you spill your breakfast burrito on the first one.

Re: Programmers' Day

#58

Post by Tomek_ »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #48
atomicdog wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you supposed to do on "Martin Luther King" day?

I (stay in bed and) have a dream. That's different, you're remembering a specific person and what they did. I don't need to remember programmers, I am one and I work with them every day. It just feels to me like harking after gratitude but the reality is that there are loads of people who do useful, important jobs and who get on with it day after day with no more than the usual acknowledgement. If you do this where d…

The origin of PD comes from Russia and AFAIK they have this tradition (inherited from the times of communism) there to celebrate professions with a special day dedicated to them, so yes, they do have firemen day, miner day or policemen day.

Re: Programmers' Day

#59

Post by ysangkok »

Killah911 wrote: post #53

Wishing all programmers Manÿ Happÿ Returns of the Daÿ and Maÿ each one of those Returns compile successfullÿ ÿ : 256th ascii character (should henceforth be the Programmers' day symbol) correction: Extended ASCII character per http://www.ascii-code.com/

There are only 128 ASCII characters.

Re: Programmers' Day

#60

Post by unwind »

Killah911 wrote: post #53

Wishing all programmers Manÿ Happÿ Returns of the Daÿ and Maÿ each one of those Returns compile successfullÿ ÿ : 256th ascii character (should henceforth be the Programmers' day symbol) correction: Extended ASCII character per http://www.ascii-code.com/

Nit-pick: that's not an ASCII character at all, since ASCII is a 7-bit encoding it does not contain a code point with the value 255 (or 256).

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%B8#Character_encodings.

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