I found that:
"We’re experiencing the natural and healthy fluctuations of a market that is deeply starved for technical skills, or at least people who can use their creativity and intuition in unison with technology."
Is something that escapes a lot of people these days and something I agree with and have taken notice of for a while, so it may not be insightful to some but I believe it can help a lot of people to find perspective.
The original version was a bit more harsh and I had to revise it. I was fairly critical of people who went into debt over liberal arts degrees and argued that if you're going into debt, do it in a degree that's going to make a return on your investment.
I have three liberal arts degrees and think your criticism is completely valid. People shouldn't go into debt for liberal arts degrees. If you're good enough you'll get a full ride; if not, you're only being admitted as slave labor to fill lower division teaching slots[1].
Unfortunately, most people who pursue liberal arts degrees aren't interested in "technical" subjects. And when you get down to brass tacks, what someone is capable of is largely a function of what interests them.
1. Not to knock teaching. It was one of my favorite parts of grad school.
The reference to the Redditor that automated his work and took a disproportionate portion of the bonus pool was a strong example of changes to come. Any thoughts on that piece?
The Reddit question wasn't really what I would consider relevant for HN, but I personally found the ethical issues at least a little bit interesting. I commented on it: my thoughts being that he should stay under the radar of management and do side work to earn more money. This is by no means ethical, and I'm assuming a fairly dysfunctional company structure, but in my experience that's the way things work in the real world.
I use F.lux. I find certain things about it irritating[1] and I don't see any signs of updates or improvements from the author. Unfortunately, it appears to be patented, which rules out the possibility of competition spurring improvement.
[1] screen dimming is way too fast, happens in sync with the sun going down even though I want normal colors til 9pm, odd behavior when waking the computer, no ability to create custom brightness curves (e.g. in the afternoon, the sun bounces off the building behind me, greatly intensifying brightness for about two hours).
Go to any interntional company's office in Singapore, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur and note that it's filled with Brits, Australians, New Zealanders with very few Americans; this is why.
Americans are exempt from the double-tax up to $91,400. Since I imagine most expat workers are earning under this level, I don't imagine that taxation is what's keeping Americans at home. Personally, I've found it difficult to even be considered for work abroad, usually due to visa issues. Other countries seem to have reciprocal working holiday visas for young people, and I imagine that this allows people to develop the specialized skills that justify the visa sponsorship or permanent resident status necessary to continue working abroad.
Just wanted to provide a bit of additional information on the US foreign income tax exclusion: You only qualify if you are outside of the US for 330 days of 365. Otherwise you're responsible for your full tax load. http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=108276,00.html
Like others are saying, he should (gradually) reduce the output of his automation system to something more believable/less noticeable. Instead of going after the meager bonus, he should put his time into doing some kind of side work. Of course, that would be highly unethical and possibly grounds for firing, but I think his employer might angrily react with the latter if they found out what he was doing already.
Incidentally, back when I worked in Arizona, I was told that a previous employee of the company had been running a side business during working hours. His coworkers ratted him out, and it went up to management. It was decided that it was okay, so long as his assigned tasks were being completed. Of course, one wonders why he was ratted out if he was completing his tasks... :-)
It was decided that it was okay, so long as his assigned tasks were being completed. Of course, one wonders why he was ratted out if he was completing his tasks... :-)
Jealousy. You never need to put a cover on a bucket full of crabs because anytime one crab tries to climb out the others will pull it back in. Sadly, people (even friends) often act in this same manner when someone they know is excelling in some way.
People do get very jealous even if it doesn't affect them. I automated something similar in one of my grad school courses (image processing). Each assignment required a report to be generated in a particular format that showed all of the results from each step in the assignment. It could be very time consuming because if you made any adjustments to your code based on incorrect results in later steps, you would often have to go back and edit the entire report to reflect your changes. I wrote a script to automatically generate these reports as I worked on the assignment. If I made any changes to my code, I could generate a new report in seconds.
A student in my class looked over my shoulder and saw me run my script in the lab. I thought she was just going to ask if she could have a copy of it, but instead she angrily accused me of plagiarism. When I asked where I was supposedly plagiarizing from, she instead just accused me of cheating. She went up to our professor in class and demanded that I received no credit for the assignment. The grades in this class were not curved in any way, so my grade would have no impact on her's. Luckily, the professor just laughed at her and said "What? I'm supposed to give him an F for being smarter than you? Write your own damn script if it's that useful.".
It isn't funny, its something to seriously think about.
Most people would fail define the meaning of the work 'job'. According to many a job is
a. Set of tasks that you need to execute 9 am to 5 pm.
b. Every other person can only do what you can do and can only execute the same tasks.
c. Any exception to a) and b) is evil.
d. People in c) are generally heretics, non-team players and are gaming the system. And in overall disrupting market for everybody else.
>>Sadly, people (even friends) often act in this same manner when someone they know is excelling in some way.
Do you know why this happens?
Its because when people of the same peer levels stay together, work together and spend a lot of time with each other. They begin to assume they all own the same money, live same lives, and have more or less than other.
Now suddenly when somebody discovers years later that one of them after going back home, used to silently work a big part of their night in garage building and selling stuff. And all that has made him relatively rich compared to him and everybody else, they feel cheated.
Its like a untold, silent agreement among people that none of them will do anything everybody else isn't doing. So that when somebody has a better chance of making it big, they generally have it from a source where all can benefit from. Else everybody remains where they are.
100% of the time? Probably not. I have seen Blue Crabs do this sort of thing, although it's likely all of them trying to get out of the bucket on their own rather than actively trying to prevent another one from escaping.
I've always wondered if it's true, because it's a very common expression here in Jamaica. We call it "crab inna barrel" (crabs in a barrel). Another term for it is "bad mind" - to be jealous of or try to impede another's success.
I did some searching and found a few references to "crab mentality", looks like it's a common term in Filipino culture. Still haven't found any evidence on if this is a real phenomena or not though.
Last time I checked, which was awhile ago, Blackberry was the only non-pager that could guarantee delivery within a known time-frame. You can't run server alerts over SMS, since it might take an hour (I've heard of a 12 hour delay around New Year's), or it might not be delivered at all.
Seems like there might be a market here for an app which acknowledged receipt and publication of a message to the target's phone, coupled with a service which escalated to a phone call to the target if it times out waiting for the acknowledgement.
I think the guarantee is the tough part; you have to own the hardware and have at least some control over the infrastructure.
Anyway, I find Georgie's comment fascinating. Sounds like there's a way to guarantee SMS delivery, though. From Wikipedia on SMS/SS7[1]:
> Therefore, it is possible to avoid delays and message losses, offering full delivery guarantees of messages and optimized routing. This model is particularly efficient when used in mission-critical messaging and SMS used in corporate communications.
when I am an old man, I hope my family make more of an effort than to plan for strangers to call me.
That's a really rude statement. Also, you have no reason to think the parent commenter's father enjoys games, or even to think that an aged person with health problems is interested in puzzles over human interaction.
I think it highlights the focus we as technology advocates hold that technology can solve society based problems. Turn back the dial 50 years, we held our elders in far higher respect than we do today.
That said, I want to show you an example of something a bit more meaningful with skype and the older generation.
Clearly this is not for all people, yet I feel it is more interesting than just to ring up and hold a "30 minute" conversation because someone is paying you to do it. Not only that but I would bet it gives some of these ladies focus, purpose, still have something to give to society.
It's beyond rude. Saying something like that without knowing anything about the people involved, their relationship or what they do for each other is extremely nasty.
In the general case, I think you're not rude at all and is a valuable comment.
But if you're refering to a specific person to whom you don't know their individual circumstances, and you do it publicly, then it is extremely rude. For the record I'm from the UK in case this is a cultural thing.
You could also expect them to die in a reasonable timeframe. Caring for someone for 6 months is a totally different thing from doing so for 6 years. It is a gift and a curse.
I've been to two conferences in my life. One was, I think, a Bluetooth conference back in 2001 or so. I learned nothing. The other was a Flash conference in 2004ish. I learned nothing and was appalled at the low quality of presentations (one 'rockstar' developer spent several minutes showing us Homestar Runner while he flexed his guns at the podium - weird).
I guess the point of conferences is really just the networking. But I never really got the idea of wanting to network with a bunch of other people who also don't know what they're doing.
I just don't see conferences being aligned with developers' interests at all (unless, of course, you're a speaker). Training sessions? Yeah. Conferences? No. Send the sales team or CEO instead.
It's interesting that you mention the Japanese, because when I looked into it awhile ago, I could find no evidence of any increase in birth defects following the bombing. I could swear that we had pictures of deformed children in a textbook as a kid, so I started Googling it, but the only things I turned up said "no statistically significant increase".
