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Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

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Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#101

Post by wmil »

SilasX wrote: post #61
imcrs wrote: post #7

Law has changed since the 80s and 90s. The profession was much more of a bloodsport. Less cases settled, far less went to arbitration, and more money was spent when a case did go to trial. Nowadays the culture has shifted almost completely to keeping costs down and settling things outside of court -- either settling outright or through a mediated arbitration (much less expensive). It's no surprise to me that law scho…

I've always suspected it was an artifact of the legal infrastructure failing to scale with demand. This chokes the courts and forces disputes to be settled outside of it (perhaps with a minimal final-stage "blessing" from a judge). The "demand" (number of disputes) increases with the number of interactions, which is roughly the square of the number of people (each pair is another potential dispute). So if - populatio…

> The "demand" (number of disputes) increases with the number of interactions, which is roughly the square of the number of people (each pair is another potential dispute).

It wouldn't actually be a square of the population. There's a fairly low number of interactions a single person can have in a day. Plus most disputes that I can have with a person I don't know are criminal instead of civil.

Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#102

Post by frozenport »

serve_yay wrote: post #79
woah wrote: post #8

We'd better improve our interview techniques before the flood of lawyer-like engineers who are only in it for the money arrives. My recommendation- avoid brain-teasers that can be crammed for. Assess based on open-source contributions, which show craftsmanship, architecture, and love of coding.

I've worked with some excellent former-lawyer devs. I think there is significant overlap between the ways a person must think as an attorney, and as a developer.

You need to show that they were also good lawyers!

Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#103

Post by sytelus »

conanbatt wrote: post #99
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #33

Engineering has exploded with foreign students who will leave the US with a degree that prints money in their home country. Not so much in America. They need to look at the numbers closer to see where the US students are actually going.

Can you elaborate with some stats or articles? The US, as far as I know, is by far the highest paying country to software engineers in the world, starting by 2-3x to rich countries. I seriously doubt ANY software engineer can make more money in China than in the US for any similar position of responsibility.

I've known quite a few people who return to their home countries and getting Director/VP positions moving from their previous titles of "Software Engineer" due to their US experience. There is a significant startup scene shaping up in Europe and Asia and so demand for US educated/experienced engineers is pretty high almost everywhere. US is revered as Mecca of software and startups pretty much everywhere so any experience at recognizable company in US counts a lot. Most of these startup typically attempt to emulate US companies like Uber and Amazon so work doesn't have lot of novelty or technical challenges as such but money could become significant - as if you had joined Amazon or Uber when before their Series A except that you are joining foreign counterparts afterwards. Most people I've known usually return to their home countries because of their families however.

Another fact I learned from my travels is that US is actually cheapest country if you keep the quality of goods and services constant. In most foreign countries - including tax free countries like UAE - things like iPhone, computers, cars are actually more expensive than in US. Almost all imported goods from China, Japan etc are typically cheaper in US than in other countries. Some services, food and labor could be cheaper but overall if you insist at staying at Hilton quality hotels or eating at nice restaurants, buying an equivalently nice urban home, or getting top quality spa treatment, cost usually comes out to same as in US.

Obviously these are anecdots so don't take it as statistical trend. Having said that there has been no better time to be expat if (1) if you have US education/experience (2) you can get work permits (3) you have freedom to travel around.

Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#104

Post by a1a »

conanbatt wrote: post #99
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #33

Engineering has exploded with foreign students who will leave the US with a degree that prints money in their home country. Not so much in America. They need to look at the numbers closer to see where the US students are actually going.

Can you elaborate with some stats or articles? The US, as far as I know, is by far the highest paying country to software engineers in the world, starting by 2-3x to rich countries. I seriously doubt ANY software engineer can make more money in China than in the US for any similar position of responsibility.

US is not the highest paying country. Not in the absolute sense -- and definitely not in a relative to living cost sense.

http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst//highest...

Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#105

Post by emodendroket »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #69
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In ten years, a huge amount of legal work will be done with software. A gigantic codified legal system is a job almost tailor made for machine learning.

Could you elaborate? I think a better approach would be to revise the legal codex so that it becomes simple enough for individuals to research and lower dependency on professional lawyers. Moreover, I disagree with the common analogy made in circles like HN that laws resemble code. Perhaps in some esoteric probabilistic language they might, though I don't believe thinking such as "ML will fix this" will yield a prope…

> I think a better approach would be to revise the legal codex so that it becomes simple enough for individuals to research and lower dependency on professional lawyers.

I think this is about as realistic a goal as the Holy Grail of an English-like programming language that's easy for non-programmers to use.

Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#106

Post by CmonDev »

smegel wrote: post #91

And I always complain that sodtware engineering, while having a decent initial salary progression, is a dead end career path (gaant charts anyone?), and I should have studied law instead. Maybe the grass is always greener...

Being a very successful lawyer is probably comparable to being a very successful developer. Unless you wanted to be "a lawyer"?

Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#107

Post by CmonDev »

woah wrote: post #8

We'd better improve our interview techniques before the flood of lawyer-like engineers who are only in it for the money arrives. My recommendation- avoid brain-teasers that can be crammed for. Assess based on open-source contributions, which show craftsmanship, architecture, and love of coding.

"open-source contributions" - which means a person is good in contributing not creating things. Ask about their private repos instead.

Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#108

Post by jazzyk »

a1a wrote: post #104
conanbatt wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate with some stats or articles? The US, as far as I know, is by far the highest paying country to software engineers in the world, starting by 2-3x to rich countries. I seriously doubt ANY software engineer can make more money in China than in the US for any similar position of responsibility.

US is not the highest paying country. Not in the absolute sense -- and definitely not in a relative to living cost sense. http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst//highest...

Both the average and the median listed for the US seem way too low in this Bloomberg stat.

Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#109

Post by logfromblammo »

woah wrote: post #65
logfromblammo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to write code in my free time before I married and had kids. I used to do a lot of stuff in my free time before then. For a self-insured employer, the fact that I have a family makes me more expensive to employ. Hiring only young, single males or young, single, and sterile females allows them to raise base salary offers without inflating total compensation. But they are not allowed by law to use the size of my…

I think that we should expect employers to allow open source contributions where it is appropriate. Breaking out general purpose stuff into libraries is more maintainable code anyway. If your current employer is hurting your career prospects, you should quit. I'm not really concerned about whatever supposed "hidden biases" there are in open source, the simple fact is that the best way to judge someone's work is to se…

That's why orchestra companies will conduct blind auditions rather than check a musician's SoundCloud portfolio.

If you want to see someone's actual work, you will have to simulate as closely as possible, in a controlled and repeatable fashion, the conditions under which that person will be doing work for you.

If you're looking for a cello player, you don't watch YouTube videos of musicians tap dancing, making trick shots in billiards, sawing lumber by hand, or performing close-up magic tricks. You number them, sit them down behind a visual barrier, and listen to each of them play the same piece of music. Then you pick the number that played it the best and hire that person.

Pulling back from that metaphor a bit, software professionals don't play just one instrument, or one genre of music. We know multiple high level languages, use different framework tools, use different design patterns, follow different processes, and the only thing we really all have in common is the ability to take a large, human-sized task and break it down into tiny, specific instructions simple enough for a stupid electronic machine to carry out--the paths between origin and destination being uncountably varied, and the ones chosen being largely a matter of arbitrary choices or aesthetic preferences.

If you won't consider anyone that does not have a public portfolio, you are inviting the obvious countermeasure of creating a sham portfolio just to jump through your hoop. You are encouraging people to write code that advances the author's interests rather than those of a project.

Re: Students are fleeing US law schools and pouring into engineering

#110

Post by conanbatt »

a1a wrote: post #104
conanbatt wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate with some stats or articles? The US, as far as I know, is by far the highest paying country to software engineers in the world, starting by 2-3x to rich countries. I seriously doubt ANY software engineer can make more money in China than in the US for any similar position of responsibility.

US is not the highest paying country. Not in the absolute sense -- and definitely not in a relative to living cost sense. http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst//highest...

I have my doubts about this ranking, starting for taxes implications which are probably severe for several of the top 10 countries in the rank.

And Switzerland and Israel are very small countries, where the engineering sample is probably very low and so are th work opportunities.

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