251–260 of 547 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe that's because one of the biggest hiring firms for mathematicians is the NSA.
For clarity, let me emphasize: The people I'm talking about stood out among professional mathematicians, not just among the general population.
It seems like it's pretty hard for the government to compete with private industry in compensation. Federal pay grades are capped by Congress, and the top grade is around ~$150k a year [1]. And note that since it's the top of the scale, you have to start people off lower so that there is salary progression. Pretty sure a top cryptographer or security expert should be worth several times that, especially if they are a…
I think this does not tell the whole story. I will show you three countries that are outperforming the vast majority of countries and why: - Switzerland: Switzerland is undoubtedly one of the richest countries. I contribute this largely to the fact that they have a direct democracy. All laws are voted upon by the people which makes lobbying much harder. Who profits from lobbying? Almost exclusively BigCos. - Singapor…
Also Switzerland is notoriously bureaucratic. Even very simple tasks require visits to one of the many, many small government offices that dot the landscape and each interaction always costs hundreds of dollars ... even when the act itself is basically "print out a piece of paper and give it to you".
But I fully agree that direct democracy creates better quality of government in general.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s the thing about working for the government. You’ll never make more money than the president.
In the UK it’s not unusual for the head of a local council (running a city or a county) to make more than the PM. University chancellors make even more.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or termination in the private sector is rarely and indicator of quality. In 23 years in the private sector, I've only once had reason to fire someone because they didn't do their job properly, and I've seen exactly one more developer fired in the companies I've worked in for similar causes. The thing is, in most cases you can move people "sideways and effectively down" - there are always grunt work that needs to be d…
This is fine if the performance is low but positive and if, as sibling comment points out, your organisation can absorb large amounts of waste. When an employee's performance is actually negative, i.e. they make things worse rather than better e.g. due to personality issues, then moving them around isn't going to work well.
A lot of the time people are just not in the position that's right for them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's usually the most capable people with that cash available (because they had more earning power in the past) It's far more typically because of inherited wealth, which has no bearing on ability but is quite often misinterpreted as such.
Well, this might be a very unpopular opinion, but if generating wealth correlates to intelligence and ability, and these traits are transmissible to children (either genetically, or through practices that parents teach to their children, or through higher educational investment), then you would expect a positive correlation between ability and amount of parental wealth. This above argument could easily be wrong, but…
It seems like it's pretty hard for the government to compete with private industry in compensation. Federal pay grades are capped by Congress, and the top grade is around ~$150k a year [1]. And note that since it's the top of the scale, you have to start people off lower so that there is salary progression. Pretty sure a top cryptographer or security expert should be worth several times that, especially if they are a…
The problem is that we can (and should!) raise government pay scales, but we must also make it easier to fire people (or manage them downwards) for incompetence. Government work is for two types of people (and there's some overlap on the Euler diagram): patriots, and folks who can't hack it in civilian life. It's not just a 'perception of gov't incompetence': it's a widespread phenomenon. Government employees tend to…
I think that any large bureaucracy, including ones in big corps, attract people like this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that we can (and should!) raise government pay scales, but we must also make it easier to fire people (or manage them downwards) for incompetence. Government work is for two types of people (and there's some overlap on the Euler diagram): patriots, and folks who can't hack it in civilian life. It's not just a 'perception of gov't incompetence': it's a widespread phenomenon. Government employees tend to…
It's popular to say things like some government employees are "folks who can't hack it in civilian life," but there's basically no evidence this is true. First of all, let's make sure we look at the full scope of civilian life with a sober eye. Anyone working the counter at your local Post Office could easily work the register at any grocery store in your town. And any medium to large company has plenty of internal p…
Not for me, I moved to London as soon as I graduated, but later moved back to a medium sized city, as a compromise.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or termination in the private sector is rarely and indicator of quality. In 23 years in the private sector, I've only once had reason to fire someone because they didn't do their job properly, and I've seen exactly one more developer fired in the companies I've worked in for similar causes. The thing is, in most cases you can move people "sideways and effectively down" - there are always grunt work that needs to be d…
> Or termination in the private sector is rarely and indicator of quality. I never said it was. My comparison would be on termination for dissatisfactory work. Regardless, the attitude that poor performing people can just be reassigned and/or languish seems to be one held exclusively by those working for companies that can absorb waste (or governments). I worked at IBM, I saw it plenty. Peer quality and management's…
My comment applies to that too: One fired out of hundreds of people I've worked with.
It costs money to hire and fire people all the time - most of the time chances are good it's cheaper to shift people around than get rid of someone to hire a replacement.
> Regardless, the attitude that poor performing people can just be reassigned and/or languish seems to be one held exclusively by those working for companies that can absorb waste (or governments).
In my case my career has been almost entirely startups. It's worked fine.
> But you're telling me and other SMBs that now in my small business of 6 people I can just move people?
That's how it's worked in every small company I've worked in.
> Or otherwise that I now have an unhealthy corporate culture?
Yes. I for one - as someone generally seen as high performing - would leave if I found myself in a company where people got fired all over the place. I don't want to work in that kind of toxic environment. As such you're creating additional risks when you keep firing.
> Though your intentions and sympathy are admirable, the approach has led to corporate bloat and an inflated supply of employees in the field (at least in software).
I work in software, and as I mention, I'm not seeing it. What I keep seeing are low performing people who often become good at obscuring how poorly they perform because they know if they stick their head out, they'll face the axe rather than a chance to find a better fit.
And many are very good at it. I've had CV's from people with very distinguished careers that couldn't code fizzbuzz if their life depended on it.
A sign of how dangerous that is, is how often I see people call out e.g. performance improvement plans or training plans as a "trick" that will get you managed out. Because some places they are used mostly to get rid of people rather than to improve people.
It sets up an extremely adversarial environment, and I suspect that given a perpetual lack of understanding of the need to actually provide proper training and support for new managers in tech, that peoples capability to obscure low performance far exceeds managers ability to root it out most places.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The class system? In 2017, really? Or do you mean that GCHQ chooses to hire exclusively from the limited pool of Oxbridge graduates and can't change their internal culture such that they could hire school leavers at 16?
It’s still part of the civil service at the end of the day. The pool of people who can both cyberattack our enemies and conjugate Latin verbs is a very small one!
You’re not wrong though. I know someone denied an MOD posting because they were Irish and had a chemistry degree.