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"My supervisor observed that I was anxious to learn new things. He assigned me to the Discoverer project to develop system schematics, interconnection diagrams,
by gnat 7y ago
"My supervisor observed that I was anxious to learn new things. He assigned me to the Discoverer project to develop system schematics, interconnection diagrams, and wire harness definition. I was working for the Electrical Systems engineer. His was a very responsible and highly visible position. And like most engineers working in this new field, he was in his early 20’s, just three years older than me. There were senior engineers in management positions, but there were no senior spacecraft engineers. Everyone was learning on the job."
Parallels to Silicon Valley are easy to find. It's a valid career path: if you want to progress fast, find a hot young area where there are no senior experts and work hard to keep up.
- markus_zhang 7y agoI'd assume nowadays it could be Cloud, AI? But thinking through, they do have some history.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- garmaine 7y agoNo, there are plenty of experts in those fields. Think things more like bitcoin.
- zatkin 7y agoQuantum information science, but I think this field is predicated on having a PhD.
- winter_blue 7y agoQuantum information science seems like something that will take many many years before it amounts to something. I remember reading that a quantum revolution in computing was just around the corner 12 years (in 2007), and only a month ago has any sort of "breakthrough" happened (referring to Google's "quantum supremacy/breakthrough[0]"). Considering this glacial track record, I'm very skeptical. [0] https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/10/29/20937930/google-quantum-supremacy-computer-physics-reset-podcast https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/10/29/20937930/google-quantu...
- Whirl 7y agoThis is becoming less true. The field is still very PhD heavy, but some employers definitely hire people right out of an undergraduate Physics or ECE degree. They end up effectively completing a PhD program on the job, but don’t get the fancy title. On the bright side, they get paid probably 3-4x more than the average grad student stipend. I think you’ll start to see more demand for non-PhDs as the various competing QIS players begin to standardize their architectures and practices.
- adrianN 7y agoQuantum computers seem to be barely out of the "we just invented a transistor" stage of development. No non-toy general purpose examples exist.
- BurningFrog 7y agoThat was 5-10 years ago. It needs to be something I've never/barely heard of.
- markus_zhang 7y agoDamn so it's basically luck...I mean even bitcoin was 10 years ago I think? Also nowadays you probably need to be a PHD to work on something really interesting.
- zarq 7y agoA lot of well-known, early programmers had PhD. Not all though.
- markus_zhang 7y agoMakes sense. But computers have a lot of interesting applications so maybe something will come out. For example gaming in the beginning, in 70s and 80s still attracted a lot of teenagers.
- PinkMilkshake 7y agoMaybe AR. I mean, look at Jeri Ellsworth, self taught and probably has the most plausibly commercial AR solution (Tilt Five) so far.
- samstave 7y agoim just amazed that Jared Lanier has found new-founded relevance. the first i read of him was ~1988 or so in Mondo 2000.... Now he is popping up all over...
- Animats 7y agoThat's clever. Nobody can draw dark in AR, which means overlays on the world have to be too bright and shiny. Ellsworth came up with a use case where the AR images always have a grey background, the blank game board. So this is much more workable than the more elaborate AR schemes. Cheaper, too, at $299.
- gen220 7y agoFrom where I’m sitting, it seems like most of the money to be made in the next 10 years won’t come from high tech, but rather from applying bang average tech (Python, React, Go, and standard AWS infra) to industries where the most experienced specialists have no concept of what those words mean (e.g. healthcare, agriculture, finance). There are huge opportunities to make these industries more efficient, and make money along the way.
- lifeisstillgood 7y agoPlease do expand - I agree with you but as usual am missing the extra connection?
- caro_douglos 7y agoI can’t speak for this person but it appears they’re making the case that a lot of value comes from giving some computer love to industries that gets no love but could benefit from a little tlc.
- gen220 7y agoI work at a company that intersects finance and healthcare. Our competitors to dominance through smart acquisitions, but this came at a fixed linear or super-linear operating cost per unit of growth. We are growing by identifying abstractions, and incorporating the new markets into existing ones. Their method was the best way to quickly grow a company to a national scale in the 60s, but it comes at the monotonically-increasing costs of internal coordination and duplicate work. Software allows you to grow gracefully, while avoiding those problems as they appear. As an example, we analyze inbound calls by volume every quarter to identify how we can anticipate user needs, and solve them ahead of time, without requiring a phone call (thereby improving the client's UX and saving operating cost). Every year, we reduce our call volume while simultaneously increasing our client headcount and improving the tools that are at our team's disposal. That kind of iterative optimization isn't possible at the big conglomerates. Look for industries that haven't figured this out yet, those are the ones where the money will be made; Stripe is a good example of this playing out in finance.
- hermitdev 7y agoI sort of started my career in finance like this. Never sought or intended to be on finance, but I could identify and solve problems the firm(s) I worked for that they didnt even know they had. Used to quip "when I'm doing my job well, noone knows that I exist. The moment I fuck up, everyone knows so exist."
- samstave 7y agoApropos username.
- youeseh 7y agoHow does billing / incentive / value based compensation work when you're invisible?
- smabie 7y agoYou often can get a lot of money I’d you threaten to leave. But in my experience, it’s a lot more profitable to work in the front office and have people know exactly how much money you have made for the firm.
- mcguire 7y agoPoorly. Unless you game the system, that is. If you ever see a "hero", they're either incompetent but putting in extra effort or setting up the events.
- walrus01 7y agoThis is sort of parallel to very young network engineers and NOC staff, in like 1996, discovering for the first time what an ASN is, what BGP4 is, etc. And the commercial growth of the modern Internet.
- edge17 7y agoWhat would those be in todays context?
- simonbyrne 7y agoDeep learning is the obvious answer: 10 years ago it was largely confined to a small number of research groups and niche conferences.
- friendlybus 7y agoMachine learning's hot moment was back in 2012, is there still low hanging fruit that google can't wipe out?
- marcoseliziario 7y agoEnterprises. Too many people doing this on startups already. But lots of money to be done with training and consulting in the corporate world.
- burning_hamster 7y agoThe behemoths don't (and can't) care about markets with a value below a certain threshold.
- strictnein 7y agoAreas in cyber security. Ex: Automating simple but highly repetitive tasks for incident responders will win you lots of friends and generate lots more opportunities if you want it.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- xouse 7y agoI think applications of AI to creating 3d modeling assets for videogames. Gaming is a >100 billion dollar industry and art can be as much as half of costs for AAA games. It seems to me like it's the lowest hanging fruit of AI in terms of difficulty vs potential revenue.
- vonmoltke 7y agoWow, if I'd had a situation like this when I was in defense I might still be there. Instead, I had managers old enough to be my father, no upward path until I "put in my time", and an attitude that wanting to move around within the company was "disloyal" to my current management.
- tnel77 7y agoI’m sorry to hear that. The defense companies I’ve worked for, big and small, have fought to retain employees. Whether it be the end of a contract or just wanting to change the type of work you are doing, these companies fought to find you another position versus taking your clearance to a competitor.
- JustSomeNobody 7y agoI hope people don't fixate on this and see this as the issue: > Instead, I had managers old enough to be my father... This... > ... an attitude that wanting to move around within the company was "disloyal" to my current management. ... is bad management and bad company culture and are the reasons you get older managers who are inflexible and just riding out a paycheck. Those are the areas to fixate on and if you see it, leave. Nobody should have to work under those conditions. Working for an older manager shouldn't (and rarely is), in and of itself, be a red flag.
- wcunning 7y agoI think it's slightly more complicated. Having an older manager/supervisor is not a bad thing. Working in a department where you need to have put in 12 years to become a supervisor is a problem. The old automotive company I work for released a "strongly recommended" schedule of different responsibilities that an engineer should have held for what time to be considered a strong candidate for promotion. There was a similar document I heard about for going from supervisor to manager. Combined these schedules said that no one would ever work their way up from entry level to department head. Ever. Therefore the only way to get there is outside of the official system via office politics, and not being honest about that is pretty dysfunctional on its own. That said, a symptom of that is the number of supervisors and managers who have 30+ years in...