hash-set

I disagree. There are crafts people who do awesome woodwork, but woodworking is a hell of a lot easier to learn that software development. Also, my dad was a welder, a very good one, but most of the welders he worked with were drunk fools and did 'acceptable' enough work. If you have half a brain you can learn to weld and even fabricate metals. I've been in that world and I know exactly how smart those people all are (hint: most dropped out of high school).

Everyone I know that "treats it like a day job" falls down on keeping their skills up to date. This is a tough field and to do it well, you are studying a lot.

Too bad the business model of VMS was so bad, eh? UNIX, and more to the point, KILLED VMS on every front. And yes, I have had the displeasure of having to use VMS and code in it and deal with the special snowflake sysadmin people who operate VMS, the most recent one being just two years ago. What a time! What mystifies me is that there are still many companies out there who refuse (stuck?) to migrate off of ancient OpenVMS Alpha hardware--all because the IT people stomp their feet and throw tantrums and won't let it go. Where are the rational tech people? Still advocating these monoliths for job security...

VMS had its day, its day is over. Learn. New. Skills.

I enjoyed using VMS in college years ago. I am now biased because I have never been mistreated as a professional developer so badly than while dealing with that VMS admin! The man was so toxic that the company should have fired him many times over but refused because he was the "only" one who could kinda sorta run their database (note: they had to restart the application daily to keep it running and the boxes had all kinds of memory issues and they were buying used hardware off of eBay to keep it running--this is a major healthcare company mind you, thousands of customers whose lives are at stake).

Time marches on, skillsets have to be upgraded, which is apparently too much for some people to accept.

Dumb companies, dumb sysadmins.

Crikey, speak the truth on here, get a downvote. Like clockwork!

Loved the article, but holy hell medium.com is a bastion of dishonest journalism! I'd move the tensorflow article somewhere else!

I have had the same issues, but you have to know when to pick up a phone.

You're the only one. Commuting SUCKS!

I don't know where you live, but the stress of commuting alone has led me to want to get out of the business. Companies have got to smarten up! There's no earthly reason why dedicated knowledge workers need to be on some cube farm or stupid newsroom office every day. It sucks.

Wow. That's...disturbing...

Gambling has always been a tax for the mathematically illiterate. Casino gambling has always been a scam and this proves it--whenever someone too clever comes along, they run right to the muscle to get their money back.

But it doesn't matter how it gets funded, it will always be chronically under-funded! I have watched this going on for thirty years! There is something inherently wrong with public education systems. I don't know if it is the unions or what, but no matter how much money we throw at them, they are always under-funded. It's amazing.

Well, we have thrown welfare at what? Three generations now? How has that worked out? It hasn't. We're right back where we began but now with three generations of people who have never worked for a living.

Focus on what I said: You can never achieve that. The wealthy will always find ways to undo whatever leveling you attempt. The elite social class in the US is its own little society and most of us are not in it!

Why do I get downvoted for offering what is thoughtful criticism? I'm not just some nobody who walked in off the street and I have actual credentials and experience teaching higher education. Furthermore, I am not wishing ill will upon others. I would like to stop the outright fleecing of today's college students, however. It's high time that ended.

I was referring the India and China.

Ha! I found out the same thing teaching college students!

I think what he/she meant is that higher education has become the new high school. What we need is a restoration of secondary school education, not "universal college degrees."

That, and we need to re-value our currency in the same fashion.

What do they do besides make the population so desperate to escape poverty that they will push their kids to the brink of madness to study for exams that are make or break for their lives?

All that considered, I would still rather see higher education and big-time farm-league sports (football & basketball) divorced. Big time sports are nothing but a drag on the mission of education--you basically have semi-pro athletes who never graduate acting like princes and engaging in all kinds of anti-social activities that get overlooked. It's a huge mess and it needs to be cleaned up.

Not true in MN--you can open enroll your kids in any district. You may not get the exact school you want due to demographics, but it's still a valid counter-example.

By the way, why do you think wealthier people shouldn't get more advantages in life? I'm all for trying to pull people up by their bootstraps, but we can't just level everything out in some misguided attempt at 'fairness.' You will never achieve that fairness. The wealthy will always find ways to gain an advantage.

Sucks about that high school, but a lot of these areas need serious political reform first before anything else can get fixed.

Resume driven development.

Had that happen, too. Had two tech leads over me who didn't want to learn anything new. One guy was in love with Apache Camel, the other, was just a J2EE guy from like the early 2000s. Frustrating.

Have you ever had to deal with a bad worker, though? In one company where I was a tech lead we had a guy who did nothing. When I assigned him work, he turned in garbage that someone else had to re-do (often me, working at home). He would go out to his car after lunch and get stoned and then come back in and fall asleep at his desk!

On paper, the team had four developers, in reality, there was only three. It was a huge headache trying to explain to PMs and other managers why our team didn't really have the bandwidth it appeared to have.

I therefore complained to our manager about this guy. The response was long in coming and when it finally arrived, we were to place the non-worker on an "improvement plan" which was mandated by HR. That means I had to work even harder now because I had to put together said plan and basically try to micro-manage this guy while also re-doing all his code. The improvement plan didn't work. His output was just as bad as always. This went on and on for months. Mercifully, the guy was finally let go after almost a year of dicking around.

All of this somehow reflected badly on me, however! My manager didn't like that I "made waves" in the company by requiring this guy to do work. He also didn't like having to smooth over all the ruffled feathers among the other teams who couldn't understand why we were always behind schedule.

Stupid, bad management is to blame, not me.

This echo chamber is dangerous. Partisan politics == everything you don't like to hear. Ha!

How the hell is it a conspiracy theory?

You might as well just quit if you think HR is there to help you at all. HR is there to protect the company from you.

Americans have the attention span of a newt, that's why.

So sad what tech people in this country have become. I prefer the anarcho-capitalists. Statism is ugly, ugly, ugly.

Um, no. I think there are a lot of good reasons why two executives wouldn't work--for example, when emergency decisions need to be made such as in war time. Plus, I'm just glad the Clintons are nowhere near the seat of power. The last Clinton Presidency was such an awful trainwreck. People forget--all they remember was the bubble stock market and the fallacy about Clinton reducing the national debt (hint: it was a projection, it was never reality).

No more Bushes, no more Clintons. Not ever.

I really think progressivism is just warmed over Marxism and has been for a really long time. Progressives near the turn of the last century pursued alcohol prohibition. Granted, they also pushed for womens' suffrage. A lot of damage was done by Prohibition, though. A lot.