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There's a huge digital divide forming as well. Between the hardware a junior software engineer at a well funded research institution such as DeepMind has access

There's a huge digital divide forming as well. Between the hardware a junior software engineer at a well funded research institution such as DeepMind has access to. Compared to the postdoc in Theoretical Physics at Princeton. Who is expected not only to write software. But maintain hardware for a proprietary "supercomputer" that was probably cast off ages ago from a government lab or wall street. We don't expect Aerospace / Mechanical engineering students to learn metalworking. They typically have access to shop technicians for that work. Why not persuade university administrators to similarly invest in in-house software engineering talent. Generalists who can provide services to any problem domain: from digital humanities to deep reinforcement learning?

einpoklum 6y ago
> We don't expect Aerospace / Mechanical engineering students to learn metalworking. They typically have access to shop technicians for that work. You'd be surprised, but that is often not the case. Lack of sufficient funding, or technicians being dicks, or mis-management by PIs, often result in graduate students having to do the technical work of metalwork, welding, lab equipment calibration, and a bunch of other tasks. Sometimes they even have to operate heavier machinery, or lasers etc without the minimum reasonable technical staff support. I know this from my time on the executive committee of my old university's Grad Student Organization.
mattkrause 6y ago
> We don't expect Aerospace / Mechanical engineering students to learn metalworking. Umm...we sorta do. As a neuroscience postdoc, I have done virtually everything from analysis to zookeeping, including some (light) fabrication. We outsource really difficult or mass-production stuff to pro, and there's a single, very overworked machinist who can sometimes help you, but most of the time it's DIY.

einpoklum 6y ago

> We don't expect Aerospace / Mechanical engineering students to learn metalworking. They typically have access to shop technicians for that work. You'd be surprised, but that is often not the case. Lack of sufficient funding, or technicians being dicks, or mis-management by PIs, often result in graduate students having to do the technical work of metalwork, welding, lab equipment calibration, and a bunch of other tasks. Sometimes they even have to operate heavier machinery, or lasers etc without the minimum reasonable technical staff support. I know this from my time on the executive committee of my old university's Grad Student Organization.

mattkrause 6y ago

> We don't expect Aerospace / Mechanical engineering students to learn metalworking. Umm...we sorta do. As a neuroscience postdoc, I have done virtually everything from analysis to zookeeping, including some (light) fabrication. We outsource really difficult or mass-production stuff to pro, and there's a single, very overworked machinist who can sometimes help you, but most of the time it's DIY.