brational

>I think it's dishonest to call yourself a Software Engineer and not have an engineering degree.

Definitely semantics. For example, I have a BS/MS in applied math from a good engineering school university. I am a software engineer mainly working with ECEs, physics, and other math guys, who are all "software engineers".

I see where you're coming from about being a SW eng without knowing a lot of math - but there are other majors - math/physics/stats etc that will be very math heavy and not "engineering degrees".

For LA a great place to start is http://codingthematrix.com/

For programmers with less math experience it serves as a perfect transition with which to then go into more theoretical aspects of LA.

There are studies that show an inverse correlation between lean body mass and all cause mortality.

So the tongue-in-cheek 'strong people are harder to kill' has some actual data behind.

The problem is of course stats 101, correlation =/= causation. It could simply be that genetics or some other factor X increases lean mass and decreases all-cause mortality.

Pragmatically speaking though, quality of life in old age is a big deal that benefits from more lean mass.

[edit: http://www.reddit.com/r/AdvancedFitness/comments/1bo5xm/asso... this has a study link and comments and links to previous HN discussion]

In my massive company's IT org, there is a specific architect role and they do everything wrong that you could think of with slowing work down, being disengaged etc.

But in the actual engineering side of the business the software engineer groups are not labeled as such except maybe within a team. Everyone is a software engineer and the level 4 or 5 SWE simply makes design decisions. They review code, optimize stuff, rip things apart, sometimes end up trashing it all, never commit anything, etc. But if they find some major change that needs to happen THEN it flows down for us to implement and commit.

Works incredibly well. But this is at a lower level... say a team of 5-10 people.

OR basically any science/engineering discipline that is rooted in math + lawyers.

That should be the 2 populations.

>There are other ways to model, but coding is by far the most expressive and widely applicable.

What about math?

> If there's a way to teach that kind of math without programming, I'm game for it.

That's largely what pure math or abstract math is. This isn't really encountered unless someone is getting a degree in math.

>My guess is, if there are two humans in the room, a "recognized leader" and a "recognized non-leader", and if the non-leader knows how to solve the riddle, and the leader does not, then the riddle will never be solved because the dog will never seek the help of the non-leader.

Why do you think that? Why not the dog search each available human for cues?

> Maybe forcing people to work in 2 or 3 hour sessions, and ask them to go walk for 15min, might have some positive effects.

It's kind of funny that you put it this way because that is exactly what people do at my job and it is encouraged. A walking break every hour or two is accepted, managers do it, we were even encouraged to install something on our computers that would remind us every X minutes.

And I work for a giant corporate entity which you would think would never encourage this.

That said, when you're working on a hard problem its very easy to lose track of time. I kick myself on the days where my only walking break is at lunch.

That religious thing is a rarity. People don't eat goat because its not really available. I, american, find it delicious but have only ever had it in indian restaurants.

Well for starters, what brought you there/ why do you live there? Mining/logging company?

I think there are 2 pieces to discuss.

1) Is alg trading overall a good thing? Possibly. It adds liquidity which helps ensure proper movement of money. Whether that is overall a good thing or not can be debated.

2) Is it a good thing to make a ton of money off of this? This is the question that is maybe a more obvious no. But you can apply the same logic to basically all of financial services. How much is too much?

How are you defining efficiency? Do you think it smart to have all of your staff 100% working at all times? What happens when new work comes?

Yann's answer was in regards to machine learning specific research. If someone merely wants to work on hard computer science and engineering problems that require ML knowledge, a PhD is not required. Though it will definitely not hurt in any way.

I'm actually going to suggest yes to you. OR at least you should start one. I, like you, cannot self-learn outside of work because my brain is done and needs to recharge. I, like you, read plenty and do the courses, but don't actually do the problems.

The real solution to your problem is to get another job. And I will disagree with some of the other posters that a PhD is required for ML because that is not necessarily true. I have a BS/MS in applied math and do research into how to apply ML into engineering automation problems for a fortune 50 manufacturing/eng company. Granted, we are not pushing the bounds of ML research. But we are looking at unsolved problems and using ML, control theory, robotics, etc to solve them.

This is what you want. And yes it is very math/algorithms heavy. Whenever we try to hire more people, HR sends us tons of BS cs guys that are sorely lacking the math background. Most of our hires are engineers (mech/ee/comp/aero) or oddballs with math/physics/ computational science like me.

So you can certainly look for other jobs (and if you want I will look at a resume to give more specific feedback). But if you already know that you don't have the background for controls and ML.. then go get it!

Here's the thing with CS or compEng PhDs. You don't have to finish them to get tons of valuable knowledge and move into the 'cool jobs' out there. But (per the rest of this HN thread) if you happen to get an awesome advisor and team relationship then you might as well finish.

>Not everyone wants to follow the classic SV career path.

I'd argue that the previous poster's advice applies to ANY career path that isn't academia.

The demographic that buys lottery tickets is largely die-hard anti-tax red that would never vote to fund education from raised taxes on anyone's income... a bit ironic when you think about it.

I see. I was previously at a company with PTO and when I left I was paid the balance. At my new company I have both, but unless I use sick time basically as '2nd vacation pool' (potential ethical issues etc) I actually end up with less time off.

> If your vacation and sick pay recently went to PTO instead, you should be looking.

Can you explain this one? I don't even come close to using my sick time up. I'd much rather have them give it as one giant PTO bucket (unless you're implying PTO is less in total than vacation + sick).

Yep. Its worth noting that (american) football helmets are the same. They dont provide shake protection just prevent skull fractures.

But they'd still be able to do that given a warrant? Or is this unwarrantable protection, for lack of a better word?

I don't understand this argument. Wouldn't law enforcement still be allowed to access phone records unecrypted if they have an actual suspect and court order?

>What's the word for the mental processing we do when awake, but are not personally aware of? Is it also 'unconscious'? Isn't there another word we can use?

Subconscious.

I tend to prefer the logistic modeling and I wish more sites would use that instead. Giving users the power to rank things from 1-5 or 1-10 is arbitrary and mostly worthless.

As an example, Rotten Tomatoes critic reviews. You get a wide variety of feedback but ultimately it's a Yes or No. The result is a percentage of Yes votes and I find their movie choices to be very reliable in terms of a "quality movie".

I think this sort of model could definitely work for restaurants.. or even on Amazon for a bigger platform example. The bottom line is it forces reviewers to decide...despite whatever asinine thing they can complain about, is it a yes or no?

So tangentially related but what does it take to increase wages in the US? We've been hearing the rhetoric for a while now that over the past 10/20/30 years productivity improvements simply go to the top and real wages decline with the hand-waving recourse that it's just the way capitalism works. But how do you actually prevent this?

Unions are obviously one solution but can be wrought with other issues. Besides that, it seems there really is no solution to wage stagnation outside of major failures or security breaches which hit the business' pockets directly.

I don't just mean in IT but it does seem to be an area where salary growth doesn't match up _at all_ with the amount of value it adds to a business, especially in the case of IT within a non-IT company.

That's pretty difficult to surmise given you don't know how much of the interest is for profit vs how much covers risk of defaulters. Arbitrarily, of that $700 turned $3900 loan a non-profit might still need to run it $3500 just to cover all the other loans that they receive nothing from.

I have 4 close German friends, 1 MS Math, 2 PhD Math, 1 PhD Physics who all completed their terminal degree at the same university as me.

3 of them decided to go back to Germany mainly for the vacation culture. All big travelers with no interest in the US work environment. The 4th integrated into American culture more but is also the biggest traveler. While he wants to go back to Germany, he is currently working in the US because he says he still doesn't know what he wants to do and he doesn't think he could get away with that lack of direction anywhere else but the US.

For completeness, hes one of the phd maths and does research for an acturial software company. But he will be switching to something else soon.

You may like that the physics guy was doing post doc in the US and then decided to bail and joined a telecom consulting company in Germany. That's not as unrelated as chem to finance but for him it was a huge switch. The company was just willing to take on a long ramp-up time and teach him.

That's the wrong interpretation. In math, a 'trivial' or 'clearly' is supposed to indicate that a certain detail is important to understanding the subject. And if it isn't clear or trivial then the reader is expected to delve deeper before moving on.

The "big problem" is that math is taught in a restricted time scale - a semester, just like all other standard courses. In reality it might take someone many weeks or months to pick up a certain piece of measure theory or hilbert spaces. Math builds upon itself and when it is rushed there is a lack of connection and then ultimately failure to understand.

This is why MOOCs are a great boon for many, as they allow more freedom to self-dictate the pace.

Ha. I guess I'll put it on my son's phone and tell him that there is a "solution" to fully defeat the app. Make a game out of it. (and I'll tell him Mom won't know)

PS this is how you build trust with your kids.

Likely because the author is a math professor and those concepts are typically only covered in CS department courses.