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to be fair, I've been coding for 8 years and have never coded in a Windows operating system outside of an IDE, and in general I don't use either, and have not since Computer Science 1.

For a job, I had to get python working on Windows, and it took me a few days to get it in stalled correctly on Windows. Even after years of coding experience.

The issue with Windows is it is designed to explicitly hide the backend functionality, and modular accessing and modifying of it to the front end user, so when you do need to do something of the sort, it's more difficult than linux, and even after using linux operating systems, macbooks I find difficult to work with because comustomizable things are hidden to the average mac user.

That being said, a linux operating system is probably daunting for a first timer.

HOW I LEARNED COMPUTER SCIENCE

I only minored in Computer Science, and like others, did not even know what it was until I went to a tech college for Electrical Engineering. I grew up in the deep south low on the socioeconomic scale, noone in my family even went to college ever so I just had had no exposure to computers or even the idea of computer science before.

It seemed cool but daunting.

1. I got a part time job in tech support to help myself get acquainted with the parts of computers and technology that you need to learn so that when you do Computer Science you can focus on Computer Science.

That side job was 15hours a week over two years and it helped me learn alot about troubleshooting, viruses, computers, I reimaged hundreds of computers and learned how to make my own isos, take apart and put together computers.

It made my computer science courses in relation seem ideal and the technical bottlenecks of working in different environments whether operating systems, relatively trivial but yeh, I had to double up on my time commitments and turn my college job into tech work to catch up.

2. once I learned what a linux operating system was, I started using only minimal versions of linux, so I would be forced to learn more about how computers work to do everyday needed tasks, along with all over layered projects and school work on it. This helps ALOT.

You want to print something, you need to install or update the drivers, you want a functionality that you didn't know could never not exist on a computer, now you learn how to figure out what to download, what rpms are learn alot about options you have from opensource packages many people have made.

Now you are aware of hundreds of gaps/needs in functionality that have not been written so you could try something and have a realistic project to work on.

You have access to other peoples code...etc...

All of this from googling about printing drivers and why you have access denied....

the learning curve is steep but its hard to learn about this world any other way.

WHY I DID NOT MAJOR IN COMPUTER SCIENCE

In regards to Computer Science, there were a few reasons I did not end up majoring in it despite really liking it, and now taking coursera courses from Stanford and Princeton to supplement my desire 5 years post graduating to go back and learn more and shift to full time software development.

As a disclaimer, these are all really a result of my mental approach/reaction to a growing desire to learn more Computer Science.

1. I really didn't have the self esteem that I could do it in four years.

I knew I could excel at Electrical Engineering, but Computer Science seemed like a whole new world I could not learn in four years.

2. I went to a pretty good engineering school, and the kids in Computer Science had basically been coding since they were 8, so for me I felt like the competition was high and I could not stand a chance.

3. In retrospect that was not the case, and in fact the people I did know in Computer Science were very welcoming and encouraging to me coming into it, but I really didn't believe I could do it.

I regret that approach now, and I could blame it on all things academia in Computer Science, but it was really my reaction to the sentiment echoed here already that it takes years to really feel comfortable with Computers, programming and all of it in context so you aren't constantly wondering what youre not understanding or spending hours trying to set up varied work environments because you've never used a terminal before.

It is a continual effort and Computer Science, more than any other major or practice, is a new lifestyle and way of thinking, and a lifelong commitment to learning.

For me, I have continued on this path and continued to code for years after college and work on independent and group projects, and taken on coding work in my jobs in relation to electrical engineering. Just now at 26, being first exposed to Computer Science at 18, do I feel confident about my ability to learn and do well as a software engineer that is not a code monkey, working on computationally challenging problems where scaling, algorithms and data structures are a core part of design and implementation to make something successful.

You just have to keep trying, and in general, in regards to computer science or elsewhere, this weeds out alot of people.

SOME INTERESTING THINGS

As a final note, I would say the most daunting part of Computer Science in college was the perception I had about the experience and practice of Computer Science majors versus mine. I felt really ignorant in comparison and had no realistic way to convince myself I could compete and do well amongst kids with 10+ years experience.

Perhaps the value of this post is to say. I overcame alot of obstacles socioeconomic and otherwise to get into college in the first place.

I made a 4.0 in a private high end highschool and had and have a good work ethic and intelligence.

I even went to an engineering school and majored in Engineering.

Despite all of these layers of statistical thinning, I still didn't feel I could cut it as a CompSci.

If it is challenging for someone who is otherwise very smart, exceeding well by all academic metrics, has a good work ethic and is already in a school offering a good Computer Science program, wants to learn Computer Science, takes entry level Computer Science courses and makes As in them, and still doesnt feel confident about Computer Science, then there is definitely something about Computer Science, that sets the barrier high for learning.

It's definitely a DIFFERENT way of thinking, and I think the barrier to that new way of thinking is not a barrier for learning in most other places perhaps maybe save linguistics, which is also extremely difficult to become proficient in if you did not grow up in a multilinguistic environment or are not constantly saturated in living in a multilinguistic community.

You need to saturate yourself in a new way of thinking, and for me it is incredibly rewarding and translates into every other part of my life and allows me to think more objectively and logicially, creatively and efficiently than I have knew I could, but I think it is the way of thinking that is the learning barrier, along with the multilayered skills needed to navigate complex computing environments, that keeps people from Computer Science.

yup, basically kept getting increases in pay (but not promotions or authority to change the situation I was in for the better) to stay.

Don't take the bait.

it's an admission that they know you are more valuable than you are being treated, and an acknowledgement that your misery in the situation is not going to change, which is exactly why they are hoping you will be ok with continued frustration in lieu of more money.

I see this happening alot. Basically government needs smart people like this to step in and rescue things when things go wrong, but they don't by any means want people like this changing the company culture or inconveniencing other people with doing more work or better work. You are there to be that smart computer guy who fixes things when things they don't understand go wrong.

They pay you alot of money to be there to do stuff they don't understand, but outside of that, they don't really want you interfering with their day to day life with all that "tech stuff".

Definitely find a better job, and don't underestimate the value increase in you quality of life by being around better people who challenge you. Nothing is worth more than that. So outside of minimum financial obligations, make plans to move elsewhere even if it will take a while. If you are the breadwinner in your situation for yourself and or other people, they will have to deal with it.

It may take even 3-4 years to move if you have long term commitments and get ready to go and do it without being risky financially, but honestly its worth it. If you are the one providing for people and you are the one donating half of your waking life and you are the one smart enough to be dissatsified with the lack of mental stimulation then you deserve to have a job you enjoy.

Being around people at work who challenge you and being on a good team will without a doubt increase your personal joy in life as well. Being emotionally isolated in a company who designates you as the computer guy and wants to drain your brain more by asking to create documentation to make the integration of technology in the company appear more valid than it really is, or save them if you don't show up work one day, is an abuse to your mental situation as much as you allow it to happen.

If you are already that smart, rising to the challenges you wish you could will only result in more income later, so don't let the current financial benefits/perceived location limitations stop you from pursuing a more rewarding career.

A couple years may seem like a long time but...what are you going to do, rot in a n IT office for the next 40 + years of your life? Make the difficult decisions/sacrifices now and even if you are in your 30s or even more, still youll get decades of happiness and challenges you won't if you throw your hands up in the air now.

I think this more like prioritizing minimum to desired requirements for your own self versus others.

For example, my boyfriend and I are both engineers but hes working at a place short term over the summer with a 3 hour time difference. I work 10am-4pm, he works 9am - 7pm but with a three hour time difference.

Staying up an extra hour to talk to him very night after hes done with work means going from 6.5 hours to 5.5 horus of sleep, which means I don't get up and workout, eat a good breakfast and go to work feeling refreshed.

Luckily im dating an icredible person and he understands this, and that the unideal arrangement is short term, so we found a comporimise and work around, but I did have to say no I can't vid chat tonight I'm going to bed.

Doing a favour is easy, giving up something of yours, of which time by the way is very expensive for busy people, at the expense of your own personal time (which people think is not a requirement but I know for a fact now it is, and even some of the busiest CEOs etc take a no compromise personal time out each day or each week reagrdless of how many emergency events are knocking at thier door. They do this because they know in the long run they suffer, and their company and employees suffer from bad decision making)

so anyways, at the expense of your own personal time, health, mental health other relationships or budget.

people who also have healthy priorities will know this and understand. For example, I'm dating someone who actually cares about me and WANTS me to be happy, well rested healthy and do well in my career. So its not hard for us to find compromises around times we would normally like to talk for a few months so I can still maintain my morning routine which sets the tone by my mental and body health for each day and in general my life, without being sickly sleep deprived, and he can still enjoy the work culture with his team who rolls in late and works late and enjoyed working late as a team. I want him to enjoy this experience and benefit from it and grab beers a couple times a week after work with his work buds. I want him to do well, so its easy for us to do favours for eachother because our personal lives and therefore our happiness together benefits from this. Neither of us would be happy together if we felt we were compromising our ability to be our best, especially at this juncture in our lives, young 20s making or breaking reaching our goals.

I've been in relationships with men who couldnt care less about my long term goals and would keep me up late, obligate me to do their chores and guilt trip me for not being arm candy at every fancy event they went to if it took away from my personal projects, working out, or me time, or guilt tripping me for staying late at work, not encouraging me to go get that new job because things are convenient if I'm unsuccessful and will be miserable enough to drop out of my career and have their kids one day.

You want to try to mostly limit expensive (in terms of time or sacrificing life goals or day to day health which can add up quickly whether its lack of sleep, personal you time, workout time, healthy food or skipping your mid day 10minute meditation or walk on your lunch break) to people who ask favours not too often, and you know there is a mutual benefit.

I don't mean that in selfish terms. I mean if someone continually doesn't do their job well and the favour is you continually give up your lunch break, which you barely take and cut down to a 15min walk in the sun to go over notes or fix another last minute repeated mistake from someone who feels entitled to your time or won't learn how to fish, and wants you to fish for them, then you should say no.

Another example, people have asked me "hey can you make an app for me, or go come meet me for a drink and listen to by business idea and give me your advice, feedback, business advice, network connections based on what I tell you."

Alot of times this person has not done their own due diligence, or knows I'm usually willing to help out and just wants my tech knowledge and connections. That's fine, but I find people who don't reach out with specific questions during a sepcific stage of development and won't send you an email about it, simply want you to meet up for a beer and let the fact you are in a conversation for an hour be free mentoring advice and social networking for them.

In regards to people asking about apps or websites and asking me to help them because they know im in tech but arent at all. I get how it could be confusing to get started or get help on an app if you run a non tech company, but the questions are so basic I now resort to basically asking them to google it.

Literally google it. If you have done all the work and have a question that you feel my specific experience/expertise could help you make a pivot point decision on a very developed situation where you have done your due diligence, and you want me to be a bouncing board, then go for it.

but I often find people like this are throwing a half assed or 20% thought 5% put in effort to idea/project, and they spend their time try to sell me on how I should be just as excited about it as they are, for the explicit purpose of me feeling its worth my time to jump in and offer more time and effort and help to advocate for their project, and always of course a good friend wanting to help people out, never a formal contract or consulting time.

Another example, I have a friend who owns a non tech company or not in the space of software, and they mentioned having a terrible time finding a good marketing firm to consult with and that at the end of the day they really just needed google analytics.

Through a very technical personal project, I was also using google analytics for something, and being that this group is run by a good friend of mine who genuinely is having a wreck of a time finding high quality marketing, I offered specifically to help out with their google analytics. Not anything else like graphic design, advertising, social media campaigns, just said yeh if you are so busy you don't even have 5 hours to go through google analytics analysis, and set up the filters you want and identify and prioritize some outliers who could be customers of worth, then I can atleast look at whats hit it already, put some security filters on it and give you a run down of what you have so far, and set up a few more things.

I figured 20 hours of work total over a month, and actually its very beneficial for me to get access to working with google analytics from a growing company perspective versus a personal website/project of mine for future.

All fine until I go to meet with their Director and find they have no financial, specific customer, demographic goals at all, much less for 1 month 3 month etc. So outside of setting up basic security, its very hard to utilize analytics if you don't know what youre analyzing or what your goals are, or the genre or even priority of customers since the potential customers span multiple industries all over the world.

if I offer to do analytics, I need to know what I'm analyzing. If google analytics is specifically analyzing people exposed to your company, then I need to know what youre interests are as far as people, targeted or widespread marketing, specific consumer groups, specific industries, specific locations, maybe atleast a profit or unit sales goal so then we could utilzie the hits to see who is most likely to provide that? Nothing...

So alot of people are willing to take free help, but alot of people don't know how to utilize that help to do something valuable or use it to teach themselves how to do it themselves or go find the long term help needed.

Alot of times what people are really asking just like when I've been asked to write emails is:

"Please review everything that exists currently, can be done and needs to be done, identify potential solutions, prioritize amongst existing priorities, document communicate, find the right people to do it, and of course since already noone else besides you is willing to do even this, if you want to prove your motivated, youll actually implement the solution yourself"

Thats what alot of times "favours" end up being when people say "hey, I want to go over this idea and get feedback from you" ....

yeh, as a female this has been a long learning experience for me. Raised in the deep south, our job is to ease political and social tensions and be as accomodating as possible, literally waiting around to see how we can pitch in and help to advertise our hospitality.

Obviously the hypocrisy came to light a long time ago, but I still see this in myself and often amongst women in the workplace.

We are asked to do more public speaking on behalf of our company. The intentions are good, and I want more women in technology so I'm happy to be a role model though I'm far from perfect, but I won't let it take me away from my job and I've turned down being a public speaker.

I've turned down running a SWE "Society of Women Engineers" Chapter at work.

I turn down running social events on behalf of the company.

My favorite two I've learned to say no to are

"Well I never learned how to write well and you take really good notes, so can you document this meeting and send a summary email out to everyone with the conversation, highlights, and action items"

I'm not a secretary, I'm an engineer, and if you have a PhD from MIT and never learned how to write, and in fact its so difficult you can't take meeting notes or you need meeting notes because you can't remember the takeaway items, then thats your problem/opportunity for growth, not a place where I turn into a secretary.

if I'm going to be writing priorities, deciding what the priorities are based on the conversation, documenting them and communicating them and following up for troubleshooting follow through, then make me your Manager.

The other one is "yeh well this is really complicated. It's kind of a mess. Noones looked at this process in a long time, lots of old documentation. Would be really great if someone could come in a organize all this for us..."

That's the part where I'm supposed to enthusiastically volunteer to reorganize the half assed work of people who never understood APIs, who additionally still work at this company and have not fixed it, who are ok with half assed work, and people who will make condescending comments about the lack of ability to pick up quickly on things as I'm rewriting the mess of documentation left behind.

I used to feel obligated to all of those things. I don't. It's really too easy for people to expect women to come in at tech companies and

1. Be a part time poster child for women in tech including but not limited to taking time away from the team to go to public speaking events and organize work events.

2. Spend your time documenting things that nooone has bothered documenting before

3. Be expected to "show enthusiasm" and "contribute" by basically cleaning out the closet of men who havn't opened the drawer to realize how disorganized things are until they have a new person trying to learn under them.

I don't do any of these things anymore, and I make it clear I am not interested in those things when I am asked. I spend time learning technical work, and continually filter my tasks of extraneous things that are not focused on addressing the core issues of my work.

Your job is to do your job and be good at it, and you will naturally be accomodating by the benefits that brings.

On a personal level, I've learned the same thing. huge guilt trips from men to hang out and call me a bitch for basically having standards, being an introvert, and not making dating my hobby outside of work. It's expected of me actually still even in tech.

Huge guilt trips from girls who expect me to be an extrovert, or take it personally that I dont want to be constantly social or go shopping or talk about boys with them, again, even in tech.

Women have a lot of pressure to be socially accomodating, and people will have subconscious expectations of you to do be that way inside and outside of work, and not realize how entitled they actually feel in regards to having a say in your own personal life decisions.

I'm 26 now, but I really wish another women would have given me this advice at 20.

Learn to say no. Focus on you and your job. You accomodate so many people when you take care of yourself and are good at your job and genuinely contribute.

the big thing here is the struggle between companies like amazon google apple who have tons of applicants, and a startup who has less applicants, and less experience from hiring false positives and identifying false negatives. They acknowledge that they turn down many good people, but also most if not all of the people not qualified. They arent worried about false negatives, they are worried about false positives. So they are willing to filter out a good portion of qualified people they aren't quite sure about who might have some overlapping results as people who are not qualified, knowing they are filtering out most if not all unqualified people.

Startups do not have the same level of people experiences to draw conclusions based on interviewing thousands and thousands of applicants and tracking the success of accepted applicants based on a large portfolio of information.

Probably the best thing you can do in a situation like this is GET someone from a company like that who has had years of experience interviewing candidates, and they will be able to bring along that experience of identifying potential false positives from the get go. That is honestly the biggest asset to these companies, their ability to hire and maintain high quality people.

in addition to the countless benefits and opportunities for varied career trajectories in multiple and evolving technologies for smart people once getting into these places, is the fact that they highly value the social network of these work places, and they cannot be duplicated in many places elsewhere, further incentivizing them to stay and internally recommending other high quality friends from elsewhere to interview.

Its so true, if you have skills and high standards for your work environment, you can walk straight out of these jobs in to other ones. I don't have issues getting jobs, I've just become understandably picky about new prospects for the right reasons. Ultimately it ends with career moves to last longer and higher quality experiences.

Thank you for saying this. Honestly, probably could have cut a total of four years of waste out of my life by just knowing the company was not a good fit for me.

I used to stay at a place and say "Ok, maybe its me, what can I do to put the most effort in, and maybe that will change how upper level toxic management trickles down and fundamentally changes how politics over rule technology and data based decisions, or hard workers over letting the old boys club stay comfortable"

I actually used to believe something I could do would change that or, if I worked hard enough or tip toed around management to make them feel comfortable about their culture and still find time to do the work I felt was important in my own time without offending people who felt comfortable consistently underperforming and had positions of superiority over me, that I would be recognized for my work, work ethic etc.

no, that's not the case. Leave and leave fast because while I was the one who eventually chose to leave those companies, those companies are never going to acknowledge how much you are worth, or that they don't deserve you. They care about self preservation and staying there no matter how well you perform is not going to help you get a better job elsewhere.

if it's short enough of a time then you don't even have to put it on your resume you worked there. A lesson I wish I knew fresh out of college.

of course, all of these things about me are true. There is something you can always do to improve yourself, or change your mindset to help yourself change how you approach frustrating situations to change how a team might respond to a solution or a challenge, and foster a more positive environment.

The biggest red flag? When you are constantly challenging yourself to grow and change to meet the needs of the company and find novel ways to contribute in your spare time, and basically having the "how can I rise to the challenge. How can I challenge myself? How can I grow?" mindset when management does not have a "how can we stay open minded and rise to meet the challenge" mindset. It's not just not a good fit for you, but it will be damaging to your career to be at odds with superiors who will feel threatened by this mentality and approach you have. It will be obvious to your peers this is the case, and it will make them look bad. When your authority is based on optics and politics, people like you are a threat to the company.

the other and only red flag you need is when the company doesnt see people as its most valuable asset, it sees large amounts of funding, and pretty buildings and initial investment as it's most valuable asset. Stay away.

and as a last note on this big red flag, again, all the things the companies I worked for did, was cool, fit my skills and interests, experience in school and previous jobs. If I tell you "hey I worked here developing cutting edge technology and heres some metrics of our stats in the market" people would say wow thats cool.

And it was cool, and it could have been cool, but people ruined it. It's really about the people, no matter what you are working on. If you don't have high quality people, then you can't have high quality products or services. Period.

True, but none of those things make you better versions of yourself. Those are easy to market because they are there when you are weak, for a reasonable price, and its easier to indulge in these things than invest in yourself. They are all stress relievers, and cater to short term satisfaction.

Everyone knows the reward offered by those things.

It's harder to market a product that makes you believe you can obtain otherwise long term term advantages, like a dress that makes you look thinner or home improvement items.

oh no worries dude, we get the same thing as girls too. Girls are marketed overpriced clothing and makeup, but in all honesty the only thing that makes the models attractive in those clothes is their investment in their diet, and long term skin care, and minimalist organic approach to really taking care of your body.

Those things are way expensive than any clothes they are wearing, and require a lifestyle of discipline and long term changes that can take years to get to.

If youre a model in that clothing, you also look just as as good in shorts and a tshirt from target, in act you probably just did an ad campaign with them last week.

Once you figure out investing in your health and your glow as a person is the long term investment, everything else becomes less relevant.

Nonethless, they do want you to believe the clothes are why the model looks so edgy and well tailored but it rarely has anything to do with that.

Take care of your body, take care of your mind. less stuff, and a few high quality investments in minimalist clothing and thats the trick.

"results suffer while the ideological conflict is enhanced"

exactly. The most disconcerting part about the state of American politics is the focus on a predecided ideology of the other party being wrong.

proving the other party wrong is apparently worth everyone suffering over.

When each party is increasingly controlled by less people, then we now have a country where 300million people are willing to shoot themselves in the foot in the name of their party, with the ruling groups of each party having the interests of neither in mind.

Now youve just created an ideology of sacrificial progress in the name of a party.

There is more loyalty in this country to ones party than there is to the country and the progress of the country. The emotions and irrationality of attachment, and continual degredation of the other party just to be in the right, approaches religion.

The only thing more demoralizing than this is the fact that this conversation is continually broadcast on two news stations each owned by billionaires, who curate the "news" themselves. The biggest progress I've seen in news lately is Bill Oreily being fired for 11 pending and accumulating harrassment lawsuits. Must be nice to get paid $75million to be fired. True journalism shines through again.

It's extremely....disconcerting.

yeh but in this case you can't recreate the culture or advantages of silicon valley anywhere, you can go be overqualified somewhere else where people don't know anything about code and will pay you to do magic, but that's not a rewarding career and the amount of places like that relative to everywhere else, means it will take 100 yrs or so before the rest of the country rises to that equilibrium...

yeh but you also just said youve resigned to being a slave, and I'm not going to bash our generation for wanting to imagine a world where we are not slaves to a bank forever.

I'm not arguing with you on any of these points.

I'm not saying its fair. I'm saying I think the biggest tech companies now never had the intention of opressing poor people and we have as a society found ourselves, as we always seem to do in quite a complex situation where its not easy to find one person or company we can point the finger to and say "its all your fault"

In regards to you conflation that not screwing up in highschool requires having better minds bodies and home environments, I grew up on welfare, in a trailor park, was the first person in my family to graduate highschool, and I juts liked to learn, but I constantly get shot down by people who drank and threw things at teachers and ignored me that not only do I not deserve the life I worked for, but my personal choices are an explicity effort to oppress them, and my success in life is a continual punishment to them for their own choices.

You don't need to be rich to decide you want to be different than your surroundings, but yes often people assume my level of success is because I must have come from a good family, and I couldn't possibly understand the hell of growing up in a backwoods south Georgia trailor park where noone went anywhere.

I agree, once choices are made, its hard to undue them. I have friends with this story: You got drunk in highschool one night, your girlfriend decides to keep the baby. You both barely passed highschool. Life is going to be a struggle to make it work because you made some bad choices, and If I had the power to not have these people live their lives for the next 10 yrs recovering from their mistakes, I would change it in a heartbeat.

All I know is I chose to take less risky choices and maybe thats because of my personality and I'm calibrated differently or maybe not. Who knows, but I think the attitude of people blaming and demonizing successful people is destructive to the very people who are experiencing socioeconomic inequality.

I've definitely distanced myself from people who demonized me when otherwise I would have remained friends, and I offered to pay for my little brother to go to college after I graduated, he was a senior in highschool at the time but he said he "just didnt want to work as hard as me"

I tried as hard as I could to convince him otherwise because hes a smart kid, but he cares more about fitting in and fitting in at his age in his environment means not trying, and being in a garage band, and dating girls who don't do anything with their lives.

I love my little brother with all my heart, and I have the ability to financially support him todo whatever he wants to do, but he chooses not to.

When and if he comes around and ten years asking for help, and I hope he never has to because he does well on his own, I will help. Will it be easier for him by then? no.

How much control do I have over this? I don't know.

Noone knows the answer but I see our society degrading into fingerpointing and the haves and the have notes.

But from experience I've never met more supportive good hearted people than I have in college and in places of higher education, and its hard for me having been on both sides to make my hometown friends feel better about their assumptions that all my "new friends" are evil and wake up every morning with a newly devised plan about how to squeeze more pennies out of their paychecks.

I experience alot of what my exboyfriend use to call the racist thing. He noticed after 3 years of dating me, and coming from a rich upscale family in the Barkshires, that he told me he thought it was funny that he noticed his family is more subconsciously without meaning to be racist than I am. He meant that while his family was very liberal good hearted, voted for Bernie, grow gardens and spend their time teaching at disadvantaged school and being frugal with their money he said they had never lived in the ghetto like me, so when I had some choice words for some girl who was trying to beat me up, it wasnt because she was black, it was because she was trying to beat me up, and in fact I had many black friends at my school, and his town had 1 black person at his school.

His family was the kind of family who would make a minority feel out of place by trying too hard to make them not feel out of place, and I just judged people based on who they were, as people, and often being exposed to many different kinds, I find good and bad people to be rich and poor, and don't discriminate effort and character to be confound to income levels.

This was something he noticed and learned about his own family by living with me in comparison. Alot of people are at an impossible disadvantage and thats absolutely true. Alot of people are self destructive without meaning to be.

but alot of people are assholes, and jerks, and I'm not giving them a free pass because they are rich and can give me a good job anymore than I'm giving someone a free pass because they grew up in the same damn town as I did.

And its annoying to be lectured by people who grew up in constant privilege about my elitism regarding situations theyve never been in before.

I belive in equality, you know real like equality. As in, guys can be manipulative jerks but damn women can be too, and alot of women don't like me because I choose not to defend the choices of every woman on the planet because I'm a woman. I believe in equality that you can be an asshole and your income doesnt always determine that (but it can). I dont assume the character or motivations about a person based on their income level, and it's a little scary to me that in politics we are trending to that kind of subconscious assoication, and its even more disconcerting coming from recent ivy league grads working at google who grew up in rich suburbia connecticut, who think that if people in places like my hometown, had an extra $100 dollar in their weekly paycheck, the path for equality and a better life would be clear for them and everything would get better. I know its more complicated than that.

I don't think you "deserve" anything you. You dont deserve what you want or desire, you deserve what you do, and often times we all make mistakes including me. Mistakes don't bother me as much as how people respond to mistakes, and choose to use it as an opportunity for growth and I appreciate your dedication, but alot of people are not dedicated.

I agree with you despite the level of skill its still requires alot of continual learning and mobility. However, it takes alot longer to become a doctor than a software dev, as in more required schooling.

Here are a few other things to consider about comparing software to doctor/medicine industry

1. The rate of change of which human biology changes is alot smaller than the rate of which technology changes, and this is a pretty obvious thing to know going in to either of these industries, so complaining about the continual learning curve I don't have much sympathy for here.

2. Doctors experience their fair share of misery as well

a. Doctors are one of the professions most in shortage in the U.S. as well as almost every other country, despite this acceptance rates into med school is insanely competetive, way moreso than a large tech company, and worse, to even apply to med school requires schooling from an official college, in an environment where college tuition has increased 500% relative to inflation in the past decade.

That means the majority of people paying 500% more to get enough school to apply to med school don't even have the opportunity to pursue their profession of choice, and experience competitiveness at an entirely different level, and are left with lots of college debt and forced to find an alternate profession.

For those who do make it, its another 10 years of school, and often not even the option to choose which genre of medicine you can go into.

99% of Doctors are happy to finally be a doctor and work anywhere, and most people who wanted to be doctors never got accepted into med school.

With software engineering, while alot of devs went to college, its not required by any means, and you can realistically learn for free never go to college and be a software dev.

Additionally, if you dont get into the top whatever elite tech firms and have bragworthy employment, you can get a job as a software engiener making a min $60k at literally almost any city in the United States, and most industrialized places in the world, it just may not be the job you want, but usually there is a large healthy range of software employment between working a low end sys admin job at a healthcare firm for $90k without having to ever increase learning skills, or working for the top 5 tech firms.

Maybe a more accurate comparison is Doctors who went to ivy leagues and have paid off their debt, and their quality of life compared to the amount of work a software engineer at amazon has to do to coninually stay at cutting edge, but your kind of mildly glazing over the 15+ years of academia and hundreds of thousands of dollarsd of tuition doctors invested before they had stable lives, after inching into the acceptance of a med school where the acceptance rate is multiple times lower than those who actually interview and get turned away from top 5 tech firms.

Youre also glazing over the level of responsibility, in 99% of cases, when a software engineer makes a mistake, someones life may not be a stake. The ability for a software dev to have impact and have their work be exposed and touch and improve is higher than a doctor, but the consequences of a doctor making one mistake is almost infinitely higher than a software engineer.

In addition, you practice under a liscense, and can be sued for malpractice. If you make a mistake as a software engineer, you may get fired, but not always and will be employable elsewhere.

You cannot rebase a github push origin master a heart transplant, or a shot, or helping giving birth to new life. If you mess up, you can't ever practice medicine again.

In addition, doctors usually have to start their own practices, so they have to be their own entrepreneurs very often much like lawyers. While software engineers can do this for free with no school or liscensing and no risk of malpractice if its in the hot field of social apps for example, you can easily work for other companies your whole life.

I just don't see the comparison between the two, or the sense of entitlement you have that being an employee at Amazon offers the stable benefits a doctor has after 20 years of schooling and paying off loans and establishing an independently run office.

Electrical Engineer true. Software Dev though? I just googledo nline 30 seconds ago and theres free courses titled

"Free online course to learn Tensorflow"

"same for Elastic Search"

"intro to VR"

"Intro to Python"

"App dev"

etc...these are all free and accessible to the same people who work at coffee shops and browse twitter and facebook.....

So would it take 10 years for these people to learn the skills?

I think the market signals are being interpreted as intentionally divisive to people who don't have the skills, instead of a need for the population of people who have the skill to increase, and thus they protest the market signals as a response instead of utilizing free and open resources on top of their already paid for internet utilties provided by these relatively highly paid workers, to make it free and easier and more accessible for other people to learn.

Sure learning these skills outside of a part time barista job could take 2-3 years, but even an entry level software position at a just a-okay tech firm who starts them out at say $50k/yr with no benefits, is still higher than working minimum wage, by a large degree.

I'm not sure everyone who is experiencing a disadvantage from the pay difference wants to increase their skill level, or learn new skills.

There are plenty of people who do and work long hours and cant, but there are also plenty of young people who do not, and choose not to and make other lifestyle decisions, which is fine with me, as long as they don't throw rocks at me because I chose to do my math homework in highschool when they chose to go out and drink every school night. Sometimes peoples life choices do have an impact, and its not always the responisibiltiy of the most successful companinies in the world to calibrate everyone elses life to the minimum starting salary of the most skilled workers on the planet.

I don't know what IS a good solution, but I feel this is an unrealistic expectation. Regardless, these companies are making an effort to do this anyways as they are in need of this skills and creating venues to take people from 0 to 1 with never having known anything about software or math.

I get what youre saying logicially and in general I don't disagree with you, but I want to pose a new way of thinking about this that may be unique to times previous and see what people think, because its a forming idea in my head, and I'm not sure its somethign I've settled on yet in general

With software engineering specifically, given the amount of people who have access to the internet, lets say like unemployed young men in theirs 20s working in the food industry or something, working part time and play video games for 40 hrs a week. If you have access to an xbox, then you have access to free online courses to learn machine learning, intro to programming, the entire internet where you can openly asked the internet questions and try to figure out a skill thats valuable and in software specifically, have multiple free venues of learning it.

But theres a lot of people who don't do that and don't take advantage of it, but also protest wages in silicon valley. There are people who work at coffee shops 20 hrs a week by choice, and go hiking by choice and had access to the same resources everyone else did, and came even alot from middle class to upper class homes, but don't want to learn high demand skills, and in fact protest them.

in this case, I'd say the pay is not only high enough, but it's so high they dislike the fact that not doing the work to get those high paying jobs is decreasing the quality of their life relative to everyone else around them.

obviously outliers exist, but what is it about software development, that, atleast for the population who can afford internet, and video game consoles, makes it so elite people arent motivated to learn.

I think some people don't want to learn or put in the effort, but also don't want to experience the reduction in quality of life as a result of other people putting in the effort.I think those same people protest more as the wages are increased, as they misinterpret the market signals for need as abusive to their lifestyle in which they choose to not go learn high demand skills.

Could this be valid in some cases?

Its true. I worked in the semiconductor industry where they retrain coal plant workers and up the pay to grab techs from navy subamarines to get them working in high tech manufsctoring plants.

They dish out money to relocate them, buy out their mortages to help relocate, send them to training/tech school, and the many techs who worked under me on my team made $170k + a year being one of maybe a handful of people in the world skilled at working on a specific machine in the fab.

They can't get enough guys (edit: or girls, girls were treated well where I worked and there were definitely women in the fab with wrenches working on tools, did not mean to discriminate but yeh women and men, whoever is willing to learn and do the work, they will hire) to work in these places so they are seeking out workers from retiring generation plants and military.

They all had it really good, actually enjoyed their jobs and got to learn high tech skills but not sit an an office all day and work on really high tech machines, got to work shift hours, night hours and get shift and night differentials and spend their weekends off traveling or doing whatever. They had a lot of fun and good guys to work with.

As for me I was their fresh out of college Shift Engineer/Manager who was salaried at 1/3rd the pay with a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering and being salaried I worked 70+ hrs a week and was on call 24/7, but they got to turn their mind off at the end of the shift, and always ragged me about it, but in a fun loving way. It's actually really humbling to be managing people twice your age making three times as much as you. I learned so much about technology and in general life from these people who had tech jobs in odd places all over the world, and it's good to have a different perspective and get exposed to your industry from the ground up by people who genuinely work hard and know their stuff. I'm glad I got exposed to that industry/life/those people.

Theres definitely alot of room for working men with a factory/tech/military background to have jobs if they are willing to learn new skills.

And ultimately life is a constant set of new experiences so as long as you are willing to learn new skills you can/should in most cases be willing to find something, and right now industries are seeking out and paying people for these skills.

What I noticed among these men who worked here doing well making alot more than me and living a good life is while telling me awesome stories from their travels in the navy or what have you, they had had multiple careers before and never shied away from the opportunity to transfer their skills technical and mechanical and apply it to an ew industry.

Theres lots of guys out there with the same life experience, skill level who arent willing to adapt or learn new industries, and thats not the problem in my opinion of anyone else but that person who feels they dont need to learn new things because they worked in a factory once.

Definitely lots of need in areas more than software dev.

Right now for example, Samsung is hiring like crazy for these kind of tech workers in Austin TX, paying them shift and night shift differentials and starting salaries beginning in the 6 figures range. The more experienced ones get fought over to pick and choose and negociate salaries and paid even more to train new workers, live a really good life.

hmm,

Well, I was specifically referencing the top 5 biggest tech companies, and the pay may seem low to the people who have been working there fresh out of college but its still relatively high pay compared to most other industries with people of the same academic and skill level but in a different industry.

They interview alot of people and the people don't turn down the jobs because the pay isn't enough, they don't get the jobs because theres not enough qualified people.

So I don't know how your statement is relevant but I don't think they don't get hired and rejected from their interviews because they applied and changed their mind that the pay wasnt high enough....

That being said, given that the skill level sought out is hard to find, and the people with those skill levels are in such high demand with many many options at their fingerprints, including but not limited to never having to work in an office if they don't want to, that there is an argument the pay should be higher for the people that do have this skill level, and work long hours, despite the rest of the world protesting at the inequality of tech valley and not seeming to understand how much of a meritocracy it is RELATIVE to other high earning places like wallstreet and politics, where the old boys club is much more relevant than tech valley (all relative here) (and i dont disagree, people with niche skill who earned it and are needed should be evaluated appropriately) but this is not the situation I was talking about.

I'm talking about the situation where people get turned down from any of these jobs where they even have the luxury to complain a software engineer salary at a top 5 company is too low, because they don't have the expertise to get the job in the first place.

This is true, high skilled employers have lots of trouble finding high skilled workers, and one of the main economic incentives driving gender and ethnic equality in high tech work places is the disadvantage of not being able to have the maximum amount of resources to pool skilled workforces from.

They can't get enough qualified people.

What about the fact that the average infiltration of technology for a company to utilize is higher than the 90s, so low to average skill, and even some high skill jobs are being exported to the billions of people willing to do the job for a fraction of the price.

Maybe just as many or more people are being employed just not in the U.S., and the pays of the people working overseas are lower relative to U.S. wages, but higher relative to the wages offered in the location of that persons job?

I feel like people are looking at the U.S. exclusively but in reality since the 90s we have to consider the other countries on this planet, as an average to normal way of utilizing job allocation resourcing as opposed to it just being large corporations that do this like in the 90s.

I'm not saying this method is overall good or stating opinions or whether i think its "right" or "wrong" as opposed to economics and how things have always worked , but it is a fact thats happening. Theres 400,000 people in China who have Engineering degrees or otherwise niche technical skill that are unemployed, and another 400k in the pipeline in Asia that are 12 yrs old taking Calculus and becoming trilingual.

I always wonder why we don't wonder why the average highschool student in the average city in the U.S. is less valuable than the average highschool student in the average city in Asia or India, instead of assuming the only reason we don't have the jobs we feel entitled to is because rich people are taking it away from us, when in reality theres really qualified hardworking people all around the world who would benefit from a fraction of the pay provided by jobs we had previous relative to the current living conditions.

The current living conditions being 400k unemployed Engineers and tech/manufactoring workers in Asia.

outside of simply being American, why are we entitled to jobs more than them, if theres a limited amount of jobs, and they are willing to do it for less because its better than Having a Masters Degree in Engineering and being homeless?

Tungsten is in inverter power supplies in other places outside of power supplies for welding. Inverters are very big, and tungsten has been used in them in many places including but not limited to almost all high quality amplification and large equipment including washing machines etc.

I understand that inverters are suddenly in vogue now and the the high end tech community is only familiar with the newest implementations in the highest end products in silicon valley, but many household products use inverters, with very standard designs of which tungsten is a apart of them, and most high quality amps use tungsten. I'm sorry you are denying reality.

You can go buy tungsten amplifiers online right now, the highest quality ones use tungsten...

or in my case in the one I designed and build from scratch this year I used vacuum tubes with tungsten filaments. Tungsten filaments reduce thermal distortion and allow a highly increased level of harmonic filtering.

Why? because transistors have a hard cut off for filtering sound, and actually most audiophiles prefer still to go back to old school designs utilizing vacuum tubes because there is no step filtering, and for people who really thrive in developing in ambient space or amplification quality for acoustics in buildings for high quality production, tungsten is still highly regarded...

in regards to the wind turbines, I believe you. I was not sure, and I've never actually seen or touched built, or designed a doubly fed induction motor, but I believe you, and I'm not arguing with you there, but I wanted to clairfy, because alot of cars, and other things that are "sustainable" are actually not when you do the research, so I always try to clarify instead of jumping to conclusions.

I know Tesla is RE free, but again, they are an exception to the rule versus the more affordable and abundant implementation like the chevy volt, nissan leaf or the prius.

In regards to lithography and PV module manufactoring, do you have any other proof than just the claim that it is nonsense?

For the only two years I stepped outside of working in Power Engineering specifically, I worked in manufactoring semiconductor chips doing chemical deposition in expitaxial growth in Diffusion.

I didn't really know anything about the industry going in, and I was lucky to be working on a team with 7 Phds from MIT who worked at AMD for 7 years, designing 14nm and 10nm transistors, and working on troubleshooting nonidealities that occurred in the line as they tested those out on the floor for the first time. So I was kind of the first person looking at results on the floor.

Regardless that to provide context that Lithography, Diffusion (fvx, ion implantation, RTA, LSA, EPI) is downstream in the development process from Lithography but all of the processes are interrelated, and a mistake upstream won't often be found in metrology until it reaches a downstream department, downstream in relation to the linear modules building out different steps of a semiconductor chip.

We worked with multiple customers, manufactoring designs including bitcoin mining chips, smart phones, game consoles, none of which I can name specific brands due to NDAs which I respect even though I don't work there as thats part of the NDA. As a startup, the company was always looking for new customers other groups were not looking for, and we prototypes all kinds of interesting products that otherwise would not be able to break a monopolized high priced manufactoring barrier for nm level chip production like samsung, intel, amd etc.

While I know nothing in comparison with the brilliant people I had the opportunity to work with, and did not want to work in manufactoring, and left to go back to Electric Power Engineering, I did learn alot about potential customers for solar pv for the specific purposes of litho, and it's definitely not nonsense.

If you have some alternative source of information that invalidates my existence for two years where I worked on this, please provide and I'm open to factual information, but its not productive to completely write someones comment off as nonsense just because you are not familiar with more recent developments in the crossover between industries by rapidly prototyping development before going public.

CRASH COURSE In regards to taking a crash course in renewable energy. I havn't taken a crash course, but I do have a Bachelors Degree in Electrical Engineering, with a concentration in Electrical Power and a Masters Degree specializing in Electric Power taking graduate classes such as

Power Generation and Control

Semiconductor Power Electronics

Advanced Semiconductor Power Electronics

Power System Analysis

Electrical High Power Engineering Lab

Electricity Economics

Electric Machinery

and am published in IEEE for large scale power flow networking.

and worked at the second company in the world to exclusively specialize in substation integration and construction of solar, geothermal and wind farms. in 2012, the startup I worked for, which at the time I was the 20th person to join and the 10th Electrical Engineer, took claim to having designed and constructed over 20% of all renewable energy farms in the United States at the time. We got bought out by a multibillion dollar company and now I work for another startup doing software design for the smart grid for large scale power flow.

I've designed and been out with my team construction team to oversee the construction of geothermal substations and solar farms, but never a wind farm, and I didn't know about the lamination in wind tubrines, which is why I asked, because in the real world, you can't just claim to know stuff you don't know, because when you do that, people can get hurt and killed when working with high power kv equipment, so I don't know about other industries, but in my industry, when we fire up a 345kv transformer and test out breakers for the first time, we don't claim to know stuff we don't know. So when I ask a question, I'm not trying to test your authority on the topic, I'm asking you to know the facts, because the facts are important in the real world...

Having been on site to construct 4 renewable energy farms and overall 39 substations in 5 different states for upgrades and other work, including replacing rare earth magnets in generators that took 8 months to build and replace due to price, processing and international importation of goods, and been in places including hydro pumping equipment stored inside mountains underground that you have to take an elevator 10 floors down to get to, I can tell you rare earth metals are alive and well all over the power grid, and their rarity is relative to the production economy, and not the chemistry table.

but please...tell me more about how I'm full of complete nonsense....

here is the link to the mining company, you can watch the award winning documentary on their site about being the second internal lithium production company in the country, and how its closely linked to Elon Musks's ventures

http://fortune.com/2016/03/29/lithium-tesla-mine-nevada/

http://www.nevadamining.org/

http://fortune.com/2015/09/16/tesla-lithium-gigafactory-neva...

and on and on the source of information goes.

Clearly while its technically in the earths crust as an abundant element, economically its rare in production and worth the 4.6 billion in investment to bring it in for local production.

Sure.

Rotor and stator materials: copper or aluminum for windings and laminated steel for cores.

For Tesla, but for doubly fed generators in wind turbines? Are you sure? I don't think so. For the Prius, 25ibs of rare earth metals, wind turbines have specified laminated steel for their generators?

Tungsten inaturally occurs at 1.5 parts per million in the earths crust, and otherwise has to be manufactored.

A concept I want to differentiate now is the 17 rare earth metals from a classical chemistry point of view, and the concept of rare earth metals in regards to the economy perceived as rare, with volatile pricing which makes investment and investment in products relying on it risky

1. The cost of mining the supposedly relatively abundant element out of the earth and the by porudcts produced by mining it

2. the locations in which it is legally allowed to be mined due to environmental or other resitrctions

3. the degree to which the country producing it is willing to export, and the exponential pricing subject to that to control its rarity relative to demand.

The fewer the countries that produce an element, and process the element, the more control they have over the pricing and its rarity relative to market distribution and therefore pricing...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2012/04/02/a-rar...

For example, here's something about lithium being effectively rare earth in the eoconomy despite being the 25th most abundant elements in relation to Elon Musks ventures since I also found this as a response to someone else commenting on this saying lithium is not a rare earth issue...think again https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/mar/20/lithium-how-a-miner...

Solar

As solar roofing moves from panels to actual roofing as Solar City and many other groups are following this trend, the units of solar being integrated are becoming smaller, and lithography is effectively a technique which uses manipulation of lasers and optics on lasers to reduce the nm level size of designs ingrained on a wafer which are then after a process of four months subject to a series of chemical depositions and polishes in vacuum vapors to create transisors.

As solar integration becomes increasingly modular with decreasing size, and the integration of the circuits within them, the transfer of lithography technology from nm level transistors into backend solar panel integration is now what the industry is moving into.

Tungsten in relation to inverters...

http://www.thefabricator.com/article/consumables/selecting-t...

Tungsten is one of the original sources that inverter technology utilized and is utilized in audio amps too.

This is also why google gave away $1 million to the little box challenge, in a crowdsourced acknowledgment of the lack of innovation around inverter technology pacing with the sustainable application that connect into the grid utilizing inverter technology, but mostly due to the inefficiency of the circuit, and the size, and less in this particular application about the pricing of the elements involved:

https://littleboxchallenge.com/

In regards to the China dumping:

yeh I don't think we should dump radioactive material in the desert, but if the goal is to have a greener earth and not pollute, I'm not sure how relocating the source of pollution halfway around the world reduces pollution, and then spending more energy to ship the prius back to california. I'm sorry but if there are problems with the way we do something, but we still want the benefits (products) offered from the materials of that process, shipping the process off to another country which is untransparent about its practices, is not a solution to the problem...its just throwing the clutter in the closet for the guests. out of site out of mind.

I didn't say all liberals, I said liberals. I'm not sure there were any republicans apart of this but there could have been.

I concede this to you, I should not over generalize. I don't identify entirely with either and being assumed to be one or the other is annoying but more importantly degrading society as a whole with these increasingly polarizing and decreasingly diverse categorizations.

It was definitely undercut by the chinese, they have control of 95% of the worlds rare earth metal production and the U.S. having their own internal source is a huge threat to their ability to cut exportation, skyrocketing prices exponentially within hours.

In addition, unlike our environmental standards which in California don't allow for that type of mining at all, in China there is no environmental standards, and lots of people, and already control of 95% of the market so its easy to pull strings as an underdog tries to gain market when you can pull enough strings and control prices that much.

Additionally production is much cheaper when labor is cheaper and there are no environmental restrictions whic modulate production.

it is very easy for them to undercut and it will continue to be so as long as we don't allow internal mining and buy it elsewhere because there is a pervading belief or cognitive dissonance surrounding the idea that pollution produced in China doesnt effect pollution in California, and by exporting the manufactoring of goods bought in California to China with less restrictions, we are improving the state of the world.

rare earths become rare earths not when they decrease in abundance, but when the places in which they are legally allowed to be mined and processed are restricted due to local environmental resitrictions, to foreign locations which have the ability to restrict exportation.

This is why Elon Musk worked with the new company in Nevada to start a new mining company in Nevada....

Lithium is used in the charging walls and I am not sure about Teslas batteries but regardless, Elon Musk seems to find decreasing the perceived rareness of lithium economically a huge priority....

please read about lithium and the tripling in price, and how global economics effects what is considered rare earth vs its occurence in parts per million or billion in the earths crust:

This Elon Musk in light of lithium tripling in price in 2015 and many times before that due to the rarity in its production locations, in which the prohibition of producing it in this country increases the rarity/price/cost/pollution of transporting it is exactly WHY hes went to Japan to work with new battery technology, why hes building manufactoring system dedicated to it, an R&D plant dedicated to it to get away from lithium, and reducing the cost of lithium production, making it less of a rare earth metal in the commodities market by day, and why hes working with a mining company in Nevada to utilize materials mined in this country to do so.

https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/mar/20/lithium-how-a-miner...

ok umm

doubly fed induction motors, wound rotor generators, and asynchronous generators actually all have rotors and stators which are comprised of rare earth metals....

Unless rotors and stators are made from something else?

What are the rotors and stators made from?

A doubly fed induction generator has conversion control systems in that you can control the rotor via power electronics control circuitry for controlling real and reactive power output and thus voltages for low voltage ride throughs, remaining synced to the power grid network frequency and other things for internally controlling the turbine when extra resources are available not needed on the grid, added on top of the generation system, but the generator is still there, and...what are these rotors and stators made out of?

A doubly

Tesla is RE free but they are an exception to the rule right now, but I am a big Tesla fan, and I'm not bashing on their designs.

Solar panels use tellerium which is a rare earth metal, and the inverters, which are also used in turbines, and air conditioning units, among other things which rely on tungsten. In addition, inverters are some of the most lossy circuits in existence and their current failure rates in production last half the lifespan, don't believe me ask Solar City....

The integration of solar roofing circuitry now requires lithography like production techniques which are incredibly expensive and filled with all kinds of rare earth elements.

The rare earth metals mine in California mined for other things other than just permanent magnets.

Electric cars are great, but there are alot of things that use permanent magnets that are transportation vehicles.

This is interesting. I am an Electrical Power Engineer, and at my tech school, our Senior Thesis projects are essentially real Engineering firms coming to the school and assigning a group of engineers to work on a project they are actually working on in real life.

The company I worked under makes electric motors for navy ships and other government contracts. There are enormous machines in side of these things, but rare earth metals are economically volatile, on a scale unlike most other industries.

China and Malaysia have most of the rare earth metal mines (we had a bastanite mine in CA where you can mine for rare most of the rare earth metals, but the liberals did not want the pollution in California, so as a result, they closed down the mine (before it reopened for a bit and then went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year) and made America dependent on rare earth metals from Asia, where for a long time, and probably still now, they have zero emissions policies so we are effectively polluting the planet more (but not in my backyard so it feels good to feel clean and drive a prius as long as all the rare earth metals and pollution caused mining it are done by people working 1/26th the pay in China breathing in that air in not me, it makes me feel green), until Elon Musk has recently come and been working with mining companies in the U.S. for his operations.

At the time in 2011 when I was a senior working on this project and the explicit motivation for investing in research for this, China had overnight banned global trade on rare earth metals with 24hrs notice for 6months, to focus on their internal development, skyrocketing the price of 90% of the worlds rare earth metal production by over 9000%

At that time, my engineering group was contracted to come up do motor design and look for utilizing either less rare earth metals while meeting the same specifications for output or looking up for alternative metals.

We ended with a form of a Halbach array, which arranges rotor and stator magnets in a permutation of an orientation where the magnetic field is increased on one side and cancelled on the other, reducing the amount of loss not going into the relationship between the stator and the rotor and increasing the magnetic field where it did.

There is still a lot of need for this kind of design and optimization, and I ended up in a different niche of Electrical Power but, people were and are dishing out alot of money around this kind of work for good reason.

I looked up patents a few years after I graduated around this kind of thing and they have spiked up significantly in the passed few years, particularly with halbach arrays.

And you are right, most people don't realize rare earth metals are required in electric motors, wind turbines, inverters for solar panels and most movements we associate with sustainable energy, despite the fundamental components being extremely rare economically volatile, and relatively no innovation going on in the space of addressing these issues.