Skills Don’t Pay the Bills
nytimes.com
Skills Don’t Pay the Bills
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Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills
#2...highly skilled manufacturing jobs — the ones that require people who know how to run the computer that runs the machine. --
Thinking meta for a moment here: How far does this concept go of machine process. Could we program machines that can run the computers that run the machines? And how about machines that program those machines?
One of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_Center_at_Whipple%27s
Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills
#3I see a similar problem even in software jobs. Employers frequently advertise for highly specific skill sets that almost nobody has. Then when nobody or only fraudulent people apply, they reject them all and claim a skills shortage. The problem seems to be a basic misconception about how transferable software skills are. An excellent programmer with no experience in Python will be out performing a poor Python programmer in a matter of weeks, even though they have had to learn an entirely new language. This idea, however, seems entirely lost on most HR departments, and the result is an almost entirely "fake" skills shortage.
Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills
#4...highly skilled manufacturing jobs — the ones that require people who know how to run the computer that runs the machine. -- Thinking meta for a moment here: How far does this concept go of machine process. Could we program machines that can run the computers that run the machines? And how about machines that program those machines? One of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_…
No we can't. I base that on being a software architect who sat through endless useless marketing meetings from IBM & their ilk promising the imminent advent of Doodleware (have a business person with domain knowledge & no technical skills draw a process on this monkey-easy UI tool & we'll generate a working application from it.)
I maintain that being a programmer will still be a highly paid skill in demand for decades to come for one simple reason : You can't bullshit a computer. You can't sweet-talk a machine into accepting your algorithm because of your great personality , looks or any other intangible except for knowing what you're doing. if you want a parallel, look no further than the sorry state of machine translation & that despite the enormous amounts of datasets they've been playing with. Human intelligence & judgement, even on a very very narrowed use case is not something computers are close to replicate.
Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills
#5...highly skilled manufacturing jobs — the ones that require people who know how to run the computer that runs the machine. -- Thinking meta for a moment here: How far does this concept go of machine process. Could we program machines that can run the computers that run the machines? And how about machines that program those machines? One of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_…
People have run software that manage mechanical turk campaigns that manage people performing tasks such as filling out online forms to create email accounts and such....
Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills
#6...highly skilled manufacturing jobs — the ones that require people who know how to run the computer that runs the machine. -- Thinking meta for a moment here: How far does this concept go of machine process. Could we program machines that can run the computers that run the machines? And how about machines that program those machines? One of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_…
No we can't. I base that on being a software architect who sat through endless useless marketing meetings from IBM & their ilk promising the imminent advent of Doodleware (have a business person with domain knowledge & no technical skills draw a process on this monkey-easy UI tool & we'll generate a working application from it.) I maintain that being a programmer will still be a highly paid skill in demand for decade…
I dunno. Perl does a pretty good job of "do what I mean" style programming. Sure, not every hard problem can be solved automatically, but a lot of tasks can be accomplished by a short script or banging keywords into Google, etc.
Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
No we can't. I base that on being a software architect who sat through endless useless marketing meetings from IBM & their ilk promising the imminent advent of Doodleware (have a business person with domain knowledge & no technical skills draw a process on this monkey-easy UI tool & we'll generate a working application from it.) I maintain that being a programmer will still be a highly paid skill in demand for decade…
I dunno. Perl does a pretty good job of "do what I mean" style programming. Sure, not every hard problem can be solved automatically, but a lot of tasks can be accomplished by a short script or banging keywords into Google, etc.
You still need to tell Perl your intent, laid out in a very specific way. by the time you're ready to write your code, you've already solved 99.9999 % of the problem at hand. you're severely underestimating your smarts.
Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills
#8I see a similar problem even in software jobs. Employers frequently advertise for highly specific skill sets that almost nobody has. Then when nobody or only fraudulent people apply, they reject them all and claim a skills shortage. The problem seems to be a basic misconception about how transferable software skills are. An excellent programmer with no experience in Python will be out performing a poor Python program…
A similar problem is HR departments abusing the "knobs" on the position's requirements. For a software-based CRM company, they required something like 7 years of Java EE development experience for the lower level development positions, and 14+ for the team lead positions. How many 14 year Java developers are there? Furthermore, do you really need 14 years of experience in a particular language for this position? I think the HR desk is lamenting the lack of good applicants and turning up the "years of experience" knob, which is in all likelyhood counter-productive.
Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills
#9I see a similar problem even in software jobs. Employers frequently advertise for highly specific skill sets that almost nobody has. Then when nobody or only fraudulent people apply, they reject them all and claim a skills shortage. The problem seems to be a basic misconception about how transferable software skills are. An excellent programmer with no experience in Python will be out performing a poor Python program…
A similar problem is HR departments abusing the "knobs" on the position's requirements. For a software-based CRM company, they required something like 7 years of Java EE development experience for the lower level development positions, and 14+ for the team lead positions. How many 14 year Java developers are there? Furthermore, do you really need 14 years of experience in a particular language for this position? I th…
I've seen several job ads requiring "5+ years experience with Technology X" where Technology X is not yet 5 years old.
Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills
#10...highly skilled manufacturing jobs — the ones that require people who know how to run the computer that runs the machine. -- Thinking meta for a moment here: How far does this concept go of machine process. Could we program machines that can run the computers that run the machines? And how about machines that program those machines? One of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_…
People have run software that manage mechanical turk campaigns that manage people performing tasks such as filling out online forms to create email accounts and such....
The thing is, you can't bullshit a human either. They will execute wrongly if the instruction is wrong.