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Electrical Engineer true. Software Dev though? I just googledo nline 30 seconds ago and theres free courses titled "Free online course to learn Tensorflow" "s

Electrical Engineer true. Software Dev though? I just googledo nline 30 seconds ago and theres free courses titled "Free online course to learn Tensorflow" "same for Elastic Search" "intro to VR" "Intro to Python" "App dev" etc...these are all free and accessible to the same people who work at coffee shops and browse twitter and facebook..... So would it take 10 years for these people to learn the skills? I think the market signals are being interpreted as intentionally divisive to people who don't have the skills, instead of a need for the population of people who have the skill to increase, and thus they protest the market signals as a response instead of utilizing free and open resources on top of their already paid for internet utilties provided by these relatively highly paid workers, to make it free and easier and more accessible for other people to learn. Sure learning these skills outside of a part time barista job could take 2-3 years, but even an entry level software position at a just a-okay tech firm who starts them out at say $50k/yr with no benefits, is still higher than working minimum wage, by a large degree. I'm not sure everyone who is experiencing a disadvantage from the pay difference wants to increase their skill level, or learn new skills. There are plenty of people who do and work long hours and cant, but there are also plenty of young people who do not, and choose not to and make other lifestyle decisions, which is fine with me, as long as they don't throw rocks at me because I chose to do my math homework in highschool when they chose to go out and drink every school night. Sometimes peoples life choices do have an impact, and its not always the responisibiltiy of the most successful companinies in the world to calibrate everyone elses life to the minimum starting salary of the most skilled workers on the planet. I don't know what IS a good solution, but I feel this is an unrealistic expectation. Regardless, these companies are making an effort to do this anyways as they are in need of this skills and creating venues to take people from 0 to 1 with never having known anything about software or math.

haskellandchill 9y ago
Hm, I'm a software engineer with nearly 10 years of experience but to get a job not in web development I estimate it would take at least 6 months of nights and weekends on a skill area such as machine learning, data science, distributed systems, data engineering, etc to be qualified in the eyes of employers. It's quite difficult to demonstrate qualifications to employers, I specialize in type theory and devote my nights and weekends to that. I've been doing this for a year but still have been rejected for every single typed programming job in NYC. I admit I am mentally slow, but I am willing to put in the work. My point is you are trivializing the effort. Often we are competing against people with better minds/bodies, better home environments, better support networks, etc. The advantages build on each other. Yeah we fucked up in high school or earlier because we just didn't know. I suppose it is fair that we will pay the price the rest of our lives. Oh well.
- usmeteora 9y ago
  I'm not arguing with you on any of these points. I'm not saying its fair. I'm saying I think the biggest tech companies now never had the intention of opressing poor people and we have as a society found ourselves, as we always seem to do in quite a complex situation where its not easy to find one person or company we can point the finger to and say "its all your fault" In regards to you conflation that not screwing up in highschool requires having better minds bodies and home environments, I grew up on welfare, in a trailor park, was the first person in my family to graduate highschool, and I juts liked to learn, but I constantly get shot down by people who drank and threw things at teachers and ignored me that not only do I not deserve the life I worked for, but my personal choices are an explicity effort to oppress them, and my success in life is a continual punishment to them for their own choices. You don't need to be rich to decide you want to be different than your surroundings, but yes often people assume my level of success is because I must have come from a good family, and I couldn't possibly understand the hell of growing up in a backwoods south Georgia trailor park where noone went anywhere. I agree, once choices are made, its hard to undue them. I have friends with this story: You got drunk in highschool one night, your girlfriend decides to keep the baby. You both barely passed highschool. Life is going to be a struggle to make it work because you made some bad choices, and If I had the power to not have these people live their lives for the next 10 yrs recovering from their mistakes, I would change it in a heartbeat. All I know is I chose to take less risky choices and maybe thats because of my personality and I'm calibrated differently or maybe not. Who knows, but I think the attitude of people blaming and demonizing successful people is destructive to the very people who are experiencing socioeconomic inequality. I've definitely distanced myself from people who demonized me when otherwise I would have remained friends, and I offered to pay for my little brother to go to college after I graduated, he was a senior in highschool at the time but he said he "just didnt want to work as hard as me" I tried as hard as I could to convince him otherwise because hes a smart kid, but he cares more about fitting in and fitting in at his age in his environment means not trying, and being in a garage band, and dating girls who don't do anything with their lives. I love my little brother with all my heart, and I have the ability to financially support him todo whatever he wants to do, but he chooses not to. When and if he comes around and ten years asking for help, and I hope he never has to because he does well on his own, I will help. Will it be easier for him by then? no. How much control do I have over this? I don't know. Noone knows the answer but I see our society degrading into fingerpointing and the haves and the have notes. But from experience I've never met more supportive good hearted people than I have in college and in places of higher education, and its hard for me having been on both sides to make my hometown friends feel better about their assumptions that all my "new friends" are evil and wake up every morning with a newly devised plan about how to squeeze more pennies out of their paychecks. I experience alot of what my exboyfriend use to call the racist thing. He noticed after 3 years of dating me, and coming from a rich upscale family in the Barkshires, that he told me he thought it was funny that he noticed his family is more subconsciously without meaning to be racist than I am. He meant that while his family was very liberal good hearted, voted for Bernie, grow gardens and spend their time teaching at disadvantaged school and being frugal with their money he said they had never lived in the ghetto like me, so when I had some choice words for some girl who was trying to beat me up, it wasnt because she was black, it was because she was trying to beat me up, and in fact I had many black friends at my school, and his town had 1 black person at his school. His family was the kind of family who would make a minority feel out of place by trying too hard to make them not feel out of place, and I just judged people based on who they were, as people, and often being exposed to many different kinds, I find good and bad people to be rich and poor, and don't discriminate effort and character to be confound to income levels. This was something he noticed and learned about his own family by living with me in comparison. Alot of people are at an impossible disadvantage and thats absolutely true. Alot of people are self destructive without meaning to be. but alot of people are assholes, and jerks, and I'm not giving them a free pass because they are rich and can give me a good job anymore than I'm giving someone a free pass because they grew up in the same damn town as I did. And its annoying to be lectured by people who grew up in constant privilege about my elitism regarding situations theyve never been in before. I belive in equality, you know real like equality. As in, guys can be manipulative jerks but damn women can be too, and alot of women don't like me because I choose not to defend the choices of every woman on the planet because I'm a woman. I believe in equality that you can be an asshole and your income doesnt always determine that (but it can). I dont assume the character or motivations about a person based on their income level, and it's a little scary to me that in politics we are trending to that kind of subconscious assoication, and its even more disconcerting coming from recent ivy league grads working at google who grew up in rich suburbia connecticut, who think that if people in places like my hometown, had an extra $100 dollar in their weekly paycheck, the path for equality and a better life would be clear for them and everything would get better. I know its more complicated than that. I don't think you "deserve" anything you. You dont deserve what you want or desire, you deserve what you do, and often times we all make mistakes including me. Mistakes don't bother me as much as how people respond to mistakes, and choose to use it as an opportunity for growth and I appreciate your dedication, but alot of people are not dedicated.
antisthenes 9y ago
Like most people pushing the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" mantra, you're vastly underestimating the cost of education, particularly of adult re-education. Yes, the answer is, it takes at minimum several years for a person working in the food industry to be anywhere reasonably close to being called competent in software engineering, because it requires you to change your entire way of thinking about problems. In many cases it's flat out impossible, given that those people work full time. If your work is not in the same field, performing the mental shift to learning something in-depth in an unrelated field is extremely cognitively costly. Another thing to keep in mind, many people working low wage jobs have families to take care of, which means even less time devoted to learning. In those cases, yes, it could probably take a decade for them to learn. And considering how fast-paced tech is, it's likely their knowledge will be outdated by the time they would actually finish the self-learning process. > Regardless, these companies are making an effort to do this anyways as they are in need of this skills and creating venues to take people from 0 to 1 with never having known anything about software or math. You're right, it's a good start. But it doesn't solve the underlying issue of how costly the education process is on behalf of the learner. These companies "disrupt" by reducing transaction costs, but the cost of the good itself remains prohibitively high.
eli_gottlieb 9y ago
A second anecdata point. I got laid-off from a job in embedded firmware in January. I just started a new gig this week as a web developer. Prior to that, almost every single position I interviewed for turned me down. I asked for feedback. They invariably said, "Not enough experience with our area." When this was web-dev, where I have little to no experience, this was understandable -- it was also 90% of the available jobs. When this was embedded firmware, it just boggled me. Almost two years' experience in embedded firmware is not enough qualification to write embedded firmware? Because I wrote bare-metal firmware, and you want someone who's used your dev-board or your embedded Linux before? Come on. Employers are currently very exacting.
- marvin 9y ago
  I'd guess the classical problem of leadership with no technological skills. They're unable to see how embedded firmware skills transfer between specialties. Either that or the "not enough experience" was a lie and there was something else, but I've seen enough of the "management has no technical skills" to believe that was the reason.
  - eli_gottlieb 9y ago
    I mean, I am inexperienced for my age due to taking time for an advanced degree. This ought to be balanced by applying for junior to intermediate positions, though. I received similar feedback from recruiters, saying that once you've been in industry a couple of years, employers view you as specialized to exactly what you've done before. Apparently it got hard to even sell my resume for non-embedded roles.

haskellandchill 9y ago

Hm, I'm a software engineer with nearly 10 years of experience but to get a job not in web development I estimate it would take at least 6 months of nights and weekends on a skill area such as machine learning, data science, distributed systems, data engineering, etc to be qualified in the eyes of employers. It's quite difficult to demonstrate qualifications to employers, I specialize in type theory and devote my nights and weekends to that. I've been doing this for a year but still have been rejected for every single typed programming job in NYC. I admit I am mentally slow, but I am willing to put in the work. My point is you are trivializing the effort. Often we are competing against people with better minds/bodies, better home environments, better support networks, etc. The advantages build on each other. Yeah we fucked up in high school or earlier because we just didn't know. I suppose it is fair that we will pay the price the rest of our lives. Oh well.

usmeteora 9y ago
I'm not arguing with you on any of these points. I'm not saying its fair. I'm saying I think the biggest tech companies now never had the intention of opressing poor people and we have as a society found ourselves, as we always seem to do in quite a complex situation where its not easy to find one person or company we can point the finger to and say "its all your fault" In regards to you conflation that not screwing up in highschool requires having better minds bodies and home environments, I grew up on welfare, in a trailor park, was the first person in my family to graduate highschool, and I juts liked to learn, but I constantly get shot down by people who drank and threw things at teachers and ignored me that not only do I not deserve the life I worked for, but my personal choices are an explicity effort to oppress them, and my success in life is a continual punishment to them for their own choices. You don't need to be rich to decide you want to be different than your surroundings, but yes often people assume my level of success is because I must have come from a good family, and I couldn't possibly understand the hell of growing up in a backwoods south Georgia trailor park where noone went anywhere. I agree, once choices are made, its hard to undue them. I have friends with this story: You got drunk in highschool one night, your girlfriend decides to keep the baby. You both barely passed highschool. Life is going to be a struggle to make it work because you made some bad choices, and If I had the power to not have these people live their lives for the next 10 yrs recovering from their mistakes, I would change it in a heartbeat. All I know is I chose to take less risky choices and maybe thats because of my personality and I'm calibrated differently or maybe not. Who knows, but I think the attitude of people blaming and demonizing successful people is destructive to the very people who are experiencing socioeconomic inequality. I've definitely distanced myself from people who demonized me when otherwise I would have remained friends, and I offered to pay for my little brother to go to college after I graduated, he was a senior in highschool at the time but he said he "just didnt want to work as hard as me" I tried as hard as I could to convince him otherwise because hes a smart kid, but he cares more about fitting in and fitting in at his age in his environment means not trying, and being in a garage band, and dating girls who don't do anything with their lives. I love my little brother with all my heart, and I have the ability to financially support him todo whatever he wants to do, but he chooses not to. When and if he comes around and ten years asking for help, and I hope he never has to because he does well on his own, I will help. Will it be easier for him by then? no. How much control do I have over this? I don't know. Noone knows the answer but I see our society degrading into fingerpointing and the haves and the have notes. But from experience I've never met more supportive good hearted people than I have in college and in places of higher education, and its hard for me having been on both sides to make my hometown friends feel better about their assumptions that all my "new friends" are evil and wake up every morning with a newly devised plan about how to squeeze more pennies out of their paychecks. I experience alot of what my exboyfriend use to call the racist thing. He noticed after 3 years of dating me, and coming from a rich upscale family in the Barkshires, that he told me he thought it was funny that he noticed his family is more subconsciously without meaning to be racist than I am. He meant that while his family was very liberal good hearted, voted for Bernie, grow gardens and spend their time teaching at disadvantaged school and being frugal with their money he said they had never lived in the ghetto like me, so when I had some choice words for some girl who was trying to beat me up, it wasnt because she was black, it was because she was trying to beat me up, and in fact I had many black friends at my school, and his town had 1 black person at his school. His family was the kind of family who would make a minority feel out of place by trying too hard to make them not feel out of place, and I just judged people based on who they were, as people, and often being exposed to many different kinds, I find good and bad people to be rich and poor, and don't discriminate effort and character to be confound to income levels. This was something he noticed and learned about his own family by living with me in comparison. Alot of people are at an impossible disadvantage and thats absolutely true. Alot of people are self destructive without meaning to be. but alot of people are assholes, and jerks, and I'm not giving them a free pass because they are rich and can give me a good job anymore than I'm giving someone a free pass because they grew up in the same damn town as I did. And its annoying to be lectured by people who grew up in constant privilege about my elitism regarding situations theyve never been in before. I belive in equality, you know real like equality. As in, guys can be manipulative jerks but damn women can be too, and alot of women don't like me because I choose not to defend the choices of every woman on the planet because I'm a woman. I believe in equality that you can be an asshole and your income doesnt always determine that (but it can). I dont assume the character or motivations about a person based on their income level, and it's a little scary to me that in politics we are trending to that kind of subconscious assoication, and its even more disconcerting coming from recent ivy league grads working at google who grew up in rich suburbia connecticut, who think that if people in places like my hometown, had an extra $100 dollar in their weekly paycheck, the path for equality and a better life would be clear for them and everything would get better. I know its more complicated than that. I don't think you "deserve" anything you. You dont deserve what you want or desire, you deserve what you do, and often times we all make mistakes including me. Mistakes don't bother me as much as how people respond to mistakes, and choose to use it as an opportunity for growth and I appreciate your dedication, but alot of people are not dedicated.

antisthenes 9y ago

Like most people pushing the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" mantra, you're vastly underestimating the cost of education, particularly of adult re-education. Yes, the answer is, it takes at minimum several years for a person working in the food industry to be anywhere reasonably close to being called competent in software engineering, because it requires you to change your entire way of thinking about problems. In many cases it's flat out impossible, given that those people work full time. If your work is not in the same field, performing the mental shift to learning something in-depth in an unrelated field is extremely cognitively costly. Another thing to keep in mind, many people working low wage jobs have families to take care of, which means even less time devoted to learning. In those cases, yes, it could probably take a decade for them to learn. And considering how fast-paced tech is, it's likely their knowledge will be outdated by the time they would actually finish the self-learning process. > Regardless, these companies are making an effort to do this anyways as they are in need of this skills and creating venues to take people from 0 to 1 with never having known anything about software or math. You're right, it's a good start. But it doesn't solve the underlying issue of how costly the education process is on behalf of the learner. These companies "disrupt" by reducing transaction costs, but the cost of the good itself remains prohibitively high.

eli_gottlieb 9y ago

A second anecdata point. I got laid-off from a job in embedded firmware in January. I just started a new gig this week as a web developer. Prior to that, almost every single position I interviewed for turned me down. I asked for feedback. They invariably said, "Not enough experience with our area." When this was web-dev, where I have little to no experience, this was understandable -- it was also 90% of the available jobs. When this was embedded firmware, it just boggled me. Almost two years' experience in embedded firmware is not enough qualification to write embedded firmware? Because I wrote bare-metal firmware, and you want someone who's used your dev-board or your embedded Linux before? Come on. Employers are currently very exacting.

marvin 9y ago
I'd guess the classical problem of leadership with no technological skills. They're unable to see how embedded firmware skills transfer between specialties. Either that or the "not enough experience" was a lie and there was something else, but I've seen enough of the "management has no technical skills" to believe that was the reason.
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  I mean, I am inexperienced for my age due to taking time for an advanced degree. This ought to be balanced by applying for junior to intermediate positions, though. I received similar feedback from recruiters, saying that once you've been in industry a couple of years, employers view you as specialized to exactly what you've done before. Apparently it got hard to even sell my resume for non-embedded roles.