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One of the other problems is two fold:
1) Many companies are putting too many conditions on what they need for a position. I've seen some factory jobs requiring a 4 yr degree (which the worker would never use!). 2) Many of the young kids entering the workforce are not looking at get-your-hands dirty jobs. There are a slew of positions for blue collar tech positions that companies are having a hard time filling because the younger generations don't want to do that sort of work. |
My current company:
CTO - No college degree. 4/6 Developers - No college degree. 1/1 Network Admin - No college degree. Most of the best IT folks I've worked with over my 15ish years in the industry either have no degree, or if they do, it's unrelated. There's just not much in most development jobs that one can learn in a college classroom - at least not how it's presently taught. IMO, if colleges had a software development program that functioned more like a classic trade school, graduates would enter the job market much more prepared. |
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I'd agree with this. I have two bachelor degrees and a master's degree. My first employer in IT basically saw my college background as a sign that I was a motivated worker and put me in an eight week IT training class to get me up and going. Spent 12 years in the industry after having no experience in IT during my six years in college. The skill set can be taught. The main thing is getting the right people in place to learn and implement it. |
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Damned if I run across many that want to do any sort of work. |
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PS - For the record my full resume would include such jobs as: Stock Filler, Factory Worker and would include toilet cleaner ... but the 17 year old me was turned down for that one ;) |
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You guys need to open a satellite office in the U.S. Somewhere near (me) Portland, Maine would be ideal. :D |
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I think you're in the wrong Portland for the US soccer hotbed SI |
Lets not kid ourselves, tho. Very few companies, especially larger ones, want to significantly train within. They want commoditized labor- cheap (or expensive) replaceable parts. Whereas it's a significant investment for a smaller company to go find new hires and, as such, have more invested in keeping an individual trained and happy, larger companies have "streamlined" hiring so it's not nearly as big an ordeal for them.
Every larger organization I've been a part of or contracted to was working towards simplifying individual components so labor costs were lower and more controlled. SI |
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My Dad was always willing to pull strings to get us jobs. The problem was his strings led to jobs like grave maintenance, sludge pond maintenance and road crew. By the time I saw my three brothers go through this, I found my own job at a grocery store. |
I firmly believe everyone should have a nice mundane job for a couple years in HS or at worst during summers in early college years. It really sets your head on straight.
My full resume would start in elementary school (4th grade) when I was a paperboy for our local neighborhood. Every morning. Rain, snow, etc. Been working ever since. |
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Code is definitely the easy part, it's algorithms and data structures that so many self-taught programmers seem to have trouble with. For so many kids that want to go into game programming (and for many of them that means "I want to work on Call of Duty!" which affects this list), when I tell them they should take physics, calculus, algorithms, and data structures, they don't believe me, they think they can just take those l33t web hacker skillz and get cracking. There are definitely exceptions, though, and depending on the particular programming job you might get away just fine with l33t hacker skillz. The programmers that have a natural feel for algorithms and data structures without formal training are great to find... |
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I didn't see anyone answer this yet. The only requirement for a person on unemployment is to make sufficient "job contacts" in a week. In Wisconsin, that is 2 contacts. A contact can be as simple as sending your resume in response to an online posting. Community service is not a requirement. Working anywhere that pays you can cause problems with unemployment benefits. At the very least, it causes confusion on filing for benefits. It is better for an unemployed person to not work at all if they can't work enough to at least cover the unemployment benefits. |
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We had a DBA open position and got three qualified guys with a ton of EXP who wanted top line money. They each made it to our final round of interviews and each had massive changes they wanted to do to make our systems better. The cost to do this would have been massive (man hours + software/hardware). So, instead, we promoted a guy who was a hardware tech but a very good problem solver. In a year, he has become a very good DBA and makes a fair salary now (because he doesn't have the 5-7 years yet to demand more). Plus, we didn't have to buy one piece of hardware as he understands we don't sell database jobs/procedures - we sell wafers :D Sometimes "good enough and cheap" is better than "perfect and expensive". That's something a lot of high-paid experts don't like to explore. |
I agree with you that I think it's typically better to invest in your own people at least for anything more than entry level (entry level- just find the correct attitudes and a real base level of competence as you can teach the rest, and you build yourself a competent farm system for recruiting up the ladder). I just don't think most large companies see it that way
SI |
Call me jaded but I think its very difficult to train an older worker in non-tech to tech. Younger kids can absorb and adapt. In my experience, older workers do not make this transition as successfully or at all.
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Depends on the mentality of the individual, their willingness to learn and mentality in my opinion - on my Computer Science course at university was a REALLY inspirational lass in her 50's who was frankly awesome, I don't think she was the best programmer out of us - but her attitude, passion and general approach was fantastic and I learnt a lot from her. |
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Yup, I tell the guys I work with right now that the our business is cutting back on funds. That means the old days when we could have the best software tools and the best engineers are over. Can you work with the open frameworks and build and use what we need or do I need to get the fully-built software and get a cheap IT dude to maintain it. The choice is yours. And they usually agree to go with the less expensive software solution. Basically: "Do you want badass software or badass engineers?" Quote:
I mostly agree. But there are some brilliant old dudes out there too. Depends a lot on time, passion, and frame of mind. |
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Don't be shocked if we eventually learn that this information was casually mentioned to the NYT and others by Republicans. I'd be downright giddy to see this waste of protoplasm relegated to being a footnote. |
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Yeah, I'm not so sure that being the candidate of all people (i.e. appealing to both sides) is a good idea if you're a politician in this climate. Then you've got both sides looking to sabotage your campaign. |
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The emails came via FOIA requests by several media organizations. The original story started via the Ft. Lee mayor complaining about the "study" being political payback. If this sinks Christie it will be an amazing fumble. He was going to win the election by a landslide, and that was obvious months before this. He had no need to use any dirty tricks to win. |
Your move, Jeb Bush!
Edit: I think Christie is the only electable Republican presidential candidate and my gut reaction is that this will blow over and some staffer will take the fall. |
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Just like the Barksdale crew in The Wire, you always keep the top dog away from any means of communication that can be traced/recorded. |
That is unbelievably fucked up though. Hopefully nobody died in the back of an ambulance but at best it made thousands of commuters lives hell for a couple of days. I wonder if you could make a criminal case out of it somewhere
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After reading the article, unless it's proven that Christie had direct knowledge of what was going on or approved of it I don't think this will be enough to sink him. It will be more akin to the IRS targeting conservatives groups.
On another note apparently a lot of the documents released had redacted information. If the released parts are this juicy, what wasn't released? |
BREAKING NEWS: Man who sincerely and honestly believes that he, personally, should be the most powerful man on Earth has issues with narcissism and abuse of power.
I know that it is important to do our due diligence and report all of these things. But, really, it's more surprising when people with naked ambition for the presidency don't have this kind of stuff in their past than when they do. |
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Civil suit? |
Oh undoubtably a ton of civil suits coming - you know there's somebody who missed a plane or got in trouble for being late to work who is already lining this up. Usually I'd moan about a litigious society but in this case I hope they get burned.
And I agree they will never touch Christie for this, but the people on the email are toast |
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This is much bigger than the IRS thing, since it involved more than a local office. It involved someone in Christie's office who was a Deputy Chief of Staff. It'd be as if the IRS decision was made by someone who worked in the West Wing. It won't touch Christie, but it's bad nonetheless. It shows questionable executive decision making. He's either lying about it, has no idea what's going on in his office, or has questionable judgment on who he places in higher positions of authority. If the NJ US Attorney has political inspirations, he can do what Christie did--start a corruption investigation. |
This first broke 117 days ago. Since then he's accepted the resignation of two Port Authority employees. Now he's shocked that something happened and he was lied to?
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Yeah- I guess it's a slow news cycle. SI |
I'm not sure I believe Christie, but he's doing a very good job in his press conference. He's striking just the right tone, IMO.
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It could just be that I am from NJ, but the Letterman top 10 last night was pretty epic. I recommend youtubing it. |
Rather poor jobs report. Not good.
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And November's was better than expected. Your point?
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So where is this Christie news coming from? I can come up with 3 possible explanations but I'm sure there are more:
1) GOP wants to bury him before he gets a chance to get out there 2) Christie wants to float some of these things to get them out of the way now as opposed to closer to 2016 3) The Clinton machine is getting an early start. SI |
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It's too early for #1 or #3. They would wait until closer to the primary and try to sink him right before Iowa/NH. For #2, his press conferences before the e-mails were released don't make sense. I think this is just a snowball effect of the initial story. For instance, there is a story out now about Christie cancelling a meeting with the Jersey City mayor after a declined endorsement. That would get zero attention before this scandal, but now every little thing like that becomes a story because it's tied to the main story and it fits the Christie bully narrative. |
A commentary I read (sorry, can't remember the link) posits that it's not motivated by a political rival (current or potential), but has blown up because Christie's a juicy target for the press, and any indication that there's fire behind the smoke has been enough for them to try and press home their advantage.
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One does wonder what effect this will have on Hillary Clinton. Obviously the Clintons have had enemy lists and petty reprisals. Wonder if that sort of thing will come out with Hillary in the Democratic Primary, or if they are liking that this is so early in the Presidential race that it'll be super old news by the time everyone is running.
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That got dealt with way back when Bill won two terms. It will be an issue if the opponent is any good, but as we've seen from both sides if you trot out a lousy candidate, it doesn't matter what the other guy has done, he'll / she'll still win. |
Waiting to see the details, but a good thing to get rid of the uncertainty
Congressional leaders back $1 trillion spending bill - CNN.com Quote:
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It's sad that we've gotten to the oint where passing a spending bill for one year is cause to break out the hallelujahs.
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A step in the right direction - a proposed budget that is actually lower than the previous year (years?).
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amazing that the fact that the mid-term elections are coming and both sides need the support of the voters, so finally "positive" things can happen now after more gridlock than ever before.
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I'm going to go with "I'm confused"
SI |
My guess is that they took the referral logs from healthreform dot gov and sent a mass email to admins of sites that had a link to the page that had been clicked since the site went offline.
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Redacted = Steve Bollea. :)
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At least SOMEONE thinks we have valuable information on our site...
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I can't believe they made it to the site and didn't get sidetracked by the Cool Images thread...
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