Can we talk about the other elephant in the room: that Facebook can afford the inflation-adjusted equivalent of the Manhattan project budget with a product that it does not charge its users to use?
STEM Shortage Claims and Facebook's $19 Billion Acquisition of WhatsApp
141–150 of 245 posts
Re: STEM Shortage Claims and Facebook's $19 Billion Acquisition of WhatsApp
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering that 3.55 is the cut-off for highest graduation honors at GT, you have nothing to be ashamed of there! If you decide to take another stab at things, there is no reason to limit yourself to Amazon/Google/etc. The southern east coast has a perfectly healthy tech ecosystem, from Atlanta up to D.C., and the GT brand carries well there.
Yes man the irony. Georgia Tech tells you that you've graduated in the top 10% of your class, institutional highest honors and all that. And then your parents call you and tell you that they spent six figures on your education and you are essentially worth nothing. Here are some quotes from my parents: "If you really wanted to work as a shitty programmer for a small pay we could have saved all that money instead of s…
I'm glad that you are starting to let that go. It can be paralyzing and then all you will do is resent yourself more because of all the time spent dwelling, making your situation and gauge worst. Let it go, you are great. Do great now.
Re: STEM Shortage Claims and Facebook's $19 Billion Acquisition of WhatsApp
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Claims of age discrimination is like claims that there is untapped cheap labor in hiring women in first world countries. If the claims were true anyone could hire up all of the cheap labor and stomp their discriminating competitors. That doesn't happen. Either it's really a grand conspiracy like some claim or the situation is not so simple. I think it's more likely older people expect to get paid more for their exper…
> I think it's more likely older people expect to get paid more for their experience, Myth : The highest paid are in the 30-40 age bracket. See http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_241497.pdf (UK-focussed, but the US is probably similar) > are less likely to learn new things on their own like younger people are, ...but they already know so much more that learning is less important. They know it already! > are less lik…
>Myth : The highest paid are in the 30-40 age bracket.
I'm not saying people are not paid money I'm saying older people will expect higher salaries based on their experience compared to younger people despite the direct value they can contribute to a company. Value = money.
>...but they already know so much more that learning is less important. They know it already!
Yes, they know so much... of things no one uses anymore, of outdated practices, and not what is making money right now. Technology changes fast and what is useful to know now won't be in 15 years.
>Myth : http://www.kauffman.org/what-we-o/research/2009/04/educatio.....
Great, so why are older people discriminating against other older people?
Re: STEM Shortage Claims and Facebook's $19 Billion Acquisition of WhatsApp
#144For perspective, the budget of the NIH, which funds a huge percentage of all the biomedical research in the US is about 31B. This is research that subsidizes and lays a foundation for many of the medical advances we have today. For additional perspective, this 31B in public money is about equivalent to all the private R&D spending done on medical research.
So the thought that someone would spend 19B on a messaging platform, which is an already solved problem, is sad. 19B probably isn't "cure cancer" kind of money, but you'd be able to solve some pretty real problems with it.
Re: STEM Shortage Claims and Facebook's $19 Billion Acquisition of WhatsApp
#145One thing not talked about is potentially superior EU education relative to US. Who would make a better impact for you?
Re: STEM Shortage Claims and Facebook's $19 Billion Acquisition of WhatsApp
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering that 3.55 is the cut-off for highest graduation honors at GT, you have nothing to be ashamed of there! If you decide to take another stab at things, there is no reason to limit yourself to Amazon/Google/etc. The southern east coast has a perfectly healthy tech ecosystem, from Atlanta up to D.C., and the GT brand carries well there.
Yes man the irony. Georgia Tech tells you that you've graduated in the top 10% of your class, institutional highest honors and all that. And then your parents call you and tell you that they spent six figures on your education and you are essentially worth nothing. Here are some quotes from my parents: "If you really wanted to work as a shitty programmer for a small pay we could have saved all that money instead of s…
If any parents are out there, please don't do this. Your children are independent adults and they have their own values and goals. They are not an investment opportunity or a vessel for your own unfulfilled aspirations. If you make your kids feel that you're disappointed in them you're just going to make them miserable and resentful and you'll have a lousy relationship as adults. Please value your children's happiness and well-being over prestige and money.
Re: STEM Shortage Claims and Facebook's $19 Billion Acquisition of WhatsApp
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Replying to leobelle here since the thread got too deep. I agree that learning to program is individual, but you don't learn to program in grad school. If a school gave you an MS and you can't do Fizzbuzz, that school isn't serving its signalling purpose (that I mentioned in my first comment). So while that school may be fine, if lax, if the employer is using education as a signal, a school that doesn't fail students…
> Replying to leobelle here since the thread got too deep. FYI the thread isn't too deep. HN disallows rapid-fire back-and-forth exchanges within a certain timeframe.
You can also just always click the "link" and reply directly to a reply there.
Re: STEM Shortage Claims and Facebook's $19 Billion Acquisition of WhatsApp
#148Idea I had a while back: Monster.com for anonymous interviews. Purge race, age and gender information from the interview process. Getting a broader range of candidates to the final interview would already be a huge step.
I'm not even sure in-person or phone interviews are necessary or beneficial. I'm aware of a top philosophy dept. that does professor hiring completely be application materials. Why? They found application materials were a better predictor of success than in-person judgements.
Re: STEM Shortage Claims and Facebook's $19 Billion Acquisition of WhatsApp
#149Acq-hires are proof of dysfunction. Companies like Yahoo have talent, but can't recognize it at the bottom because the middle-management filter is so defective. So they buy market-verified talent at a panic price. That's shitty for the individual (well, great for 0.05% of them and shitty for 99.95%) because there's so much noise. The problem is that the VC-funded world is full of soft-skulls who never grew up (some a…
I'll agree with that, but it's dysfunction both in the hiring process and also in the R&D process. It's the middle management filter in both cases. Corporate culture is a big part of this. I worked for a major airline in the '90s and during that time, we had at least 5 initiatives to build online travel sites. Wasteful? Sure, but the winner of that process is a well-known travel site that's thriving today. That parti…
I'll agree with that, but it's dysfunction both in the hiring process and also in the R&D process.
M&A has replaced R&D, but it's an extremely wasteful and inefficient replacement. The silly social media apps are actually pretty rare; more common are firms that look like real companies but have junk technology that starts falling apart the minute it's sold.
Re: STEM Shortage Claims and Facebook's $19 Billion Acquisition of WhatsApp
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering that 3.55 is the cut-off for highest graduation honors at GT, you have nothing to be ashamed of there! If you decide to take another stab at things, there is no reason to limit yourself to Amazon/Google/etc. The southern east coast has a perfectly healthy tech ecosystem, from Atlanta up to D.C., and the GT brand carries well there.
Yes man the irony. Georgia Tech tells you that you've graduated in the top 10% of your class, institutional highest honors and all that. And then your parents call you and tell you that they spent six figures on your education and you are essentially worth nothing. Here are some quotes from my parents: "If you really wanted to work as a shitty programmer for a small pay we could have saved all that money instead of s…
Wow. You can't judge your success by what your parents think, especially not Asian parents who, though they often have the best of intentions, frankly have no idea how things work in the U.S.
Anecdote: my parents, who are from Bangladesh but have lived here since about 1989, called me one day (five years ago now), deeply concerned that my brother wanted to turn down his acceptance to Cal Tech to go to this place called "Yale." They had no idea that there were avenues to success beyond getting a PhD in engineering and going to work for Lockheed-Martin. They're extremely smart, loving, and genuinely concerned parents who supported us (financially and emotionally) in every way, but had these ingrained cultural perceptions that I had to talk them out of.
Also, I'll say this: there's very little you can do with a 3.9 at Georgia Tech that you can't do with a 3.65. Your GPA is well beyond the cut-off where American companies are going to care, except perhaps the snobbiest investment banks or management consulting firms. What held back your job search was almost certainly your narrow scope, not anything about your stats on paper.