231–240 of 279 posts
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Outside the Bay Area, $250K is top dollar.
Not really, even in the Midwest, such as the Metro Detroit region, 250k is definitely attainable. I’m in that band and live there.
I find it hard to get roles in the midwest (large metro in Ohio) clearing 200k, though sometimes bonuses get you up there.
Worked with a guy ten years ago that would obsessively read these reports from the Pentagon. Here's a couple of his stories about the matter: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/pentagon/ and https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-mari... (very old and I apologize for my horrific javascript at the time.) It sounds like nothing has changed. Relevant to this crowd, maybe: "Most of the Cobol code the P…
Of course, devil's advocate would point out COBOL in 60s was written with a lot more focus on lasting in general. They didn't largely have the same general attitude of 'we iterate quickly with our script kiddies' as is prevalent today. Not that all software from then was wonderful. Or that COBOL magically guarantees great code. But, on the flip side, you can't say the code base isn't battle-hardened (to various liter…
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Give me the complete and utter authority, Congress off of my neck for four years and I will. The problem is not technical, it's the immeasurable amounts of tiny personal fiefdoms established by the countless layers of middle management. You won't get rid of these without someone who has been publicly given the political backing to end the career of anyone resisting change. And that includes the Congress members which…
That's not how authority works. Whatever you would choose to implement, you will need to have enough buy in from those middle managers and fiefdoms otherwise you will end up with heel-dragging or, worse, malicious compliance. If you've been in any kind of organization that's tried to impose completely top-down edicts, you should have seen the kind of destruction of morale it leaves in its wake.
https://chrislaing.net/blog/the-memo/
And now no one remembers what it was like without AWS...
Can anyone explain to me why it is awful for a person to live in debt but it is okay for the federal government to do so? I've never understood this in the least, other than the "kick the can down the road, America superpower backed by military blah, blah, blah" very weak argument. History is full of the carnage of failed empires that had this same idea. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN 32 trillion in debt…
If your salary increases 3% a year every year in real terms, and it's cheap to borrow, then it's absolutely mathematically optimal to carry a level of debt that you never pay off. In fact, you'd be a sucker if you didn't.
The main difference between people and government is that people like to retire, while governments can live forever.
People ideally need to stop carrying debt at some point in their lives because they need to save for retirement. Governments don't need to do that.
It's kind of counterintuitive, but governments don't ever need to pay off all their debt. They just need to keep the overall debt level below a certain ratio to GDP. Debt can keep growing as GDP keeps growing.
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>People crave Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose I'm not a sack of chemicals whose desires can be reduced down to some pithy pseudo-scientific Maslowian quip. The only thing I crave from my job is cash so I can take care of me and my family. 250k/yr for a COBOL position would suit that end just fine. You can keep your autonomy, mastery, purpose, and all the other foofoo, just hand me the check so I can be on my way.
> I'm not a sack of chemicals whose desires can be reduced down to some pithy pseudo-scientific Maslowian quip. The only thing I crave from my job is cash I thought you were against reductionism?
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yeah I agree but when you look at the slope not the y-intercept it’s getting obviously better. one advantage the government would have is training/fine-tuning on a hundred million lines of domain specific cobol.
The slope doesn't really matter, because the target is "better than a human, and able to identify and fix its own errors". The slope will decrease as you approach this threshold. It's also wildly bad to plan to train and fine tune on code that you know has bugs. Already we have Copilot generating code with trivial vulnerabilities because that's what it's trained on.
Honestly I think editing code will be easier than creating wholly new applications to precise spec.
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When did Eisenhower warn about failed audits, or something like them?
He warned about the military industrial complex swallowing up funds which could be better used for schools or to fulfill other public services.
People generally disregard the first part when they quote him on the "military industrial complex".
[0] Because the era where the US could remain safely protected by the two oceans was ending due to the development of missile technology, and because the complexity of military equipment had gone beyond what a civilian company could be expected to produce with a few years of factory retooling as in WWII.
If a military was not ready to fight on day 1, if you were starting from a heavily disadvantageous position, you may never have the opportunity to catch up. The weapons technologies on the horizon would allow shipyards and advanced manufacturing facilities to be destroyed by an enemy thousands of miles away. That means you would need to have enough tanks, ships and so forth to put up a fight immediately, rather than waiting a few years, and they would need to be continually modernized. Therefore those industries would need to be kept around permanently, but subservient to the public interest.
Pardon me if this is too simplistic, but wouldn't cutting back the budget begin to instil some fiscal responsibility into an organization? Conducting an audit seems like just another expenditure in a climate of obscene overabundance of resources that encourages spending more and more.
Worked with a guy ten years ago that would obsessively read these reports from the Pentagon. Here's a couple of his stories about the matter: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/pentagon/ and https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-mari... (very old and I apologize for my horrific javascript at the time.) It sounds like nothing has changed. Relevant to this crowd, maybe: "Most of the Cobol code the P…
Start paying 250k a year for cobol developers and the problem fixes itself really fast. That or start migrating the system. Or more likely they keep using it until it completely breaks and then run to the government for a big handout to fix it. Easy to be irresponsible with other peoples money.
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It definitely is not.
WTF. I worked on some high exposure projects as a senior dev and never a final offer above $130k USD. Even after haggling hard at a company I had been at for 3 years and they told me I was their top, highest paid engineer and it led me to quit. Then I got approached by Facebook to work in London HQ and the offer they were dangling was £100GBP which was about $130k USD. Highest offer I ever got before I even got to th…
$250k total comp isn't even particularly high at one of the big companies.