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Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

businessinsider.com

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Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#111

Post by refurb »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #43
ghaff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a federal commission that Schmidt co-chairs. >haven't built universities like Stanford, Duke, Cornell etc. I assume the answer is that they generally find that it makes a lot more sense to give oodles of cash to their alma mater or some favored school to get your name on a building and/or really beef up a department than to try to found a new school which would likely take decades to establish any sort of reputa…

You're underestimating the egos of billionaires and how they love winning compared to other billionaires. A name on a building is nice. A name on a university that's mentioned with Duke and MIT...now that's something you can brag about. The owners of NBA teams - all billionaires, most willing to lose money year-to-year in order to win and beat the other billionaires. The women's basketball league in Russia - teams ow…

Prestige takes a LONG time to build. You’d basically need your graduates to becomes titans of industry.

Bezos would be dead long before that happens.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#112

Post by knzhou »

nitrogen wrote: post #103
knzhou wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because school prestige is a positional good. This is like saying you can address the shortage of Olympic gold medals by just manufacturing tons of them.

But the point of school prestige, at least in tech, is to assess skill. If the available pool of raw talent is larger than can be funneled through prestigious schools, then there is a need for more schools.

Again, just substitute the words.

But the point of Olympic medals is to assess skill. If the available pool of talented athletes is larger than the number of gold medals, then there is a need for more gold medals.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#113

Post by MattGaiser »

curiousllama wrote: post #31

This will fail not because it's a bad idea, but because the government will reject it. Contrary to popular belief, established universities do a very effective job of preparing tech talent for government jobs. The issues, which Schmidt seems to miss, are twofold: (1) the government, with few exceptions, is a TERRIBLE place to build effective tech skills. Slow, heavily outsourced, bureaucratic beyond belief, and low p…

> Slow, heavily outsourced, bureaucratic beyond belief, and low paid, there is very little creativity and variety in which to build unique technology, and no reward for the BS.

Currently a public sector tech worker, although in Canada. We can recruit some great people as although the salaries are not FAANG, they are pretty good for people who don't live in cities with that.

Problem is, they don't give raises or if they do, the raises are tiny. I earned 10,000 more choosing a government job over other offers where I am. I have been in the role 11 months. Recruiters are consistently offering 10,000 more than what I make now. Guess how long the average person stays? Just over one year.

If I quit my current department and went to a different government, I could get that 10,000 dollar raise and if I quit after another 1-2 years there to another government department, I would probably hit near the maximum bracket for tech work in the government unless I took a lead position.

Government also doesn't recruit people out of school for tech unless they have a full slate of internships. You need at least one year of experience to join. So there is this narrow 2-3 year in your career window where government work can make sense.

So not only are you kind of forced out fairly early in your career, but they incentivize spreading your time among many different departments as that is the only time you can get a big salary jump.

Plus all the other things you say are true. Decisions take months for anything.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#114

Post by Shebanator »

vmception wrote: post #97
curiousllama wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed - University of Maryland is a huge tech feeder to public sector orgs, believe it or not.

All the DC area computer science programs feed right into the NSA and defense. Which is funny because Silicon Valley companies won't think candidates from those schools are that interesting, while simultaneously thinking that the intelligence and defense has better programmers. People are people.

Who in Silicon Valley thinks that? I've never heard anyone say it in my 30+ years here (until now).

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#115

Post by ghaff »

nitrogen wrote: post #99
95_JL_OK wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd tack onto the first point: obsolete technology everywhere. Worked in the public sector for a short while and the amount of outdated tech being used is astounding. Some of the solutions being discussed as "new" have been outdated for decades. Having to deal with overwhelming bureaucracy in exchange for working on what everywhere else would be legacy systems really killed any desire to stay.

The most important aspect of any technology is that it works. In that regard, functioning "legacy" systems are ideal systems. The legacy bureaucracies are the problem. Kind of like SpaceX popularizing rocket reuse, we should think of older code, languages, and frameworks as "battle tested", not "legacy". They should only be replaced if it's clear that essential maintenance is not possible, if a critical requirement i…

But we should refactor it into a functional programming language with microservices running in containers because... resume-driven development.

I do agree that many organizations accumulate so much cruft they have trouble getting out of their own way. But the flip side of rewriting things for reasons isn't necessarily better.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#116

Post by thephyber »

xenospn wrote: post #48
jonwachob91 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everything in the world can be measured by pay. Sure, an FBI Criminal Profiler earns a tiny fraction of what a google dev earns. But one can take serial killers off the street, and the other just makes ads more annoying. A Social Worker earns almost nothing, but they get to help the most needy of people get the help they need. A FB engineer earns 10x the pay, but just makes ads more annoying. A teacher earns almo…

"The common good" is something that is easily lost on the vast majority of people in tech, it seems.

Only if you assume that "the common good" in this country isn't a mirage (which tech workers are more likely to see, IMHO).

That phrase is roughly equivalent to how large corporations thank "essential workers" during the pandemic. It's marketing. It's an excuse to underpay and leave workers without sufficient support.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#117

Post by MattGaiser »

natalyarostova wrote: post #94
curiousllama wrote: post #31

This will fail not because it's a bad idea, but because the government will reject it. Contrary to popular belief, established universities do a very effective job of preparing tech talent for government jobs. The issues, which Schmidt seems to miss, are twofold: (1) the government, with few exceptions, is a TERRIBLE place to build effective tech skills. Slow, heavily outsourced, bureaucratic beyond belief, and low p…

Classic modern HN comment. The hard working person with a history of success who is trying a risky ambitious project will fail, because they didn't consider the few things a commentor instantly spotted as problems.

It is not a few things, but rather one of the core reasons governments cannot do technology well.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#118

Post by curiousllama »

bsanr2 wrote: post #104
curiousllama wrote: post #31

This will fail not because it's a bad idea, but because the government will reject it. Contrary to popular belief, established universities do a very effective job of preparing tech talent for government jobs. The issues, which Schmidt seems to miss, are twofold: (1) the government, with few exceptions, is a TERRIBLE place to build effective tech skills. Slow, heavily outsourced, bureaucratic beyond belief, and low p…

I wonder if you may be discounting the value of a pipeline that's presumably going to be substantially less expensive than going to a private university. Perhaps one of the goals here is to flood the government tech sector with new personnel who have been indoctrinated to expect a certain culture, in such a way that the existing structure won't be able to resist changing. If you and your entire cohort have an n-year…

This is a very good point. A university to transition Business Analysts into junior data scientists or HR reps into HR analysts, train managers in tech fundamentals, and upskill SWEs in security or new tech would be SUPER valuable.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#119

Post by jkqwzsoo »

Zhenya wrote: post #84
Upvoter33 wrote: post #45

"Palo Alto-based Stanford University ... and MIT have historically been the primary talent pools for the tech industry" This is far from true. If you look at the total workforce in tech, the majority is by far from much larger, public schools, like Berkeley, Michigan, Illinois, Washington, Texas, Wisconsin, etc., etc. MIT and Stanford have had amazing great people, but they are far from the "primary" source of talent…

In order of ranking and total enrollment (sourced from us news) 1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 3,130 2 Stanford University 3,444 ' 3 University of California--Berkeley 2,337 4 California Institute of Technology 536 5 Carnegie Mellon University 4,112 6 University of Michigan--Ann Arbor 3,247 7 Purdue University--West Lafayette 3,428 8 Georgia Institute of Technology 4,252 9 University of California--San Diego…

These are graduate school enrollment numbers. Without breaking down CS/EE versus most other engineering disciplines, are MS/PhDs the "primary" talent source for the tech industry?

For comparison, GATech claims 61% of their students get engineering degrees and an enrollment of 14,142, thus ~8,626 undergraduate engineering students.

https://coe.gatech.edu/about/facts-rankings

Other school's engineering enrollment:

UT Austin claims 6,003 undergraduate and 2,101 graduate.

https://www.engr.utexas.edu/about/facts-and-rankings/program...

Berkeley claims 3,746 undergraduates and 2,357 graduates.

https://engineering.berkeley.edu/about/facts-and-figures/

MIT claims 2,451 undergraduates.

https://engineering.mit.edu/about/facts-and-figures/

Stanford claims 1570 undergraduate and 3603 graduate.

https://registrar.stanford.edu/everyone/enrollment-statistic...

I think the parent comment is correct to say there are many larger engineering schools than MIT and Stanford.

Re: Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

#120

Post by LatteLazy »

curiousllama wrote: post #31

This will fail not because it's a bad idea, but because the government will reject it. Contrary to popular belief, established universities do a very effective job of preparing tech talent for government jobs. The issues, which Schmidt seems to miss, are twofold: (1) the government, with few exceptions, is a TERRIBLE place to build effective tech skills. Slow, heavily outsourced, bureaucratic beyond belief, and low p…

I agree with you. And that's not even the only problem...
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