President Donald Trump and His Daughter Ivanka To Unveil a New Federal Computer Science Initiative With Major Tech Backers (recode.net) 260
From a report: President Donald Trump will issue a new directive Monday to supercharge the U.S. government's support for science, tech, engineering and mathematics, including coding education, three sources familiar with the White House's thinking told Recode. To start, Trump is set to sign a presidential memorandum at the White House later today that tasks the Department of Education to devote at least $200 million of its grant funds each year to so-called STEM fields, as the administration seeks to train workers for high-demand computer-science jobs of the future. And on Tuesday, Trump's daughter and advisor, Ivanka, is expected to head to Detroit, where she will join business leaders for an event unveiling a series of private-sector commitments -- from Amazon, Facebook, Google, GM, Quicken Loans and others -- meant to boost U.S. coding and computer-science classes and programs, the sources said.
Say what... (Score:3, Funny)
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Give it time... (Score:2)
Does a hissy fit on Twitter count as suicide? (Score:3, Insightful)
These days I just hope that General Kelly can keep #PresidentTweety from reading any of these discussions. Might make Trump apoplectic. In simplified Trump-speak, the Donald might throw another hissy fit.
Trump's frequent hissy fits just embarrass all of us and make Putin laugh. Actually, a severe seizure could kill him, and I think Pence could be an even worse leading occupant (insofar as Pence's brain seems to be made of lead).
Oh yeah. About the story. Trump knows nothing, NOTHING. Sergeant Schultz would b
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I thought Trump was against funding schools
It depends on who's paying Trump so they can be in charge of the funds.
eg. Betsy Devos, she paid Trump hundreds of millions for her billion dollar education gig.
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Yea, like big donors don't get hired by both parties when they are in power. It's politics, get used to it.
It's not like the secretary of Education is all that big of a deal....
Companies want cheap workers (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter if there are no American applicants or if there are hundreds of American applicants. As long as there is one person from India willing to do the work for 20k a year, they will pick that person.
Re:Companies want cheap workers (Score:5, Informative)
Then explain the multiple open job positions posted all across the country on job sites. It took me all of a week to find a new job in the 6-figure range. Yes there are Indians that claim they'll do it for $20k a year and companies get what they pay for.
Have you considered that you don't have modern, relevant job skills if someone in India is taking them?
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Then maybe you should have thought about that when you decided to never learn anything new on the job. I could word my resume any number of a dozen different ways depending on what the job position asked for. But that meant going above and beyond showing up to work every day.
I volunteered for new projects. I learned how to do skill X and apply it to my desk job.
Getting a college degree doesn't set you for life. It gives you a bit of breathing room and a head start until the rest of the world catches up. I g
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No. Working on actual projects incorporating new skills.
"Hey analyze these million files, I don't care how you do it"
"I wonder what sort of analysis tools Python has" "Hrm, I wonder if I could use Jenkins to automate batch running of analysis".
Tada. New resume buzz words.
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You've been lucky then.
I have gotten scolded (eventually laid off) for doing that sort of thing at my old job - "I don't have the budget for you to be doing that sort of scripting on these projects." Boss would rather have done crap by hand.
At my job before that, I did that sort of thing but there was limited funds/advancement so that's why I left to go to the aforementioned job that promised to let me go do my own thing.
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Well they ran up one side of me and down the other for doing something that apparently wasn't my job.
If that is accurate(and I have no reason to doubt you), I would be spreading my resume like pollen in spring. Any place that hammers on you for legitimate improvements is a place to leave ASAP. If it's a contract, document your work, note the boundaries that they threw up in your path, collect your paycheck and move on.
Now, if you work in a strictly controlled and regulated environment, such as some parts of healthcare or military engineering, then I could see why fooling around with a standard library w
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Now, if you work in a strictly controlled and regulated environment,
Funny you should mention that.... it's more or less what I'm doing. We have voodoo scripts and Excel files turning out software because that is what got certified.
We're coming up on getting certification on future devices and the build environment. I've moving all of that to Jenkins and automated builds. And code compliance checking (MISRA C : 2012).
No more "oh, I guess that merge didn't work". We're ~15 years behind other industry devops.
Same goes for unit testing physical I/O instead of having a test eng
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It's just another language.
How well should I know it before I'm allowed to? If I had to rank it at that time I'd probably fall between my Matlab and C. Now I'd probably put it between my Simulink and Matlab on the scale of Simulink, Matlab, C, PHP, C++, VBA, C#, to Java. Last week I had to write a CDLL wrapper. Next week it may be C#. I'll grab the C# documentation, run it through some regex and have it spit out a mostly assembled Python class.
And if my industry started moving to a new language I might hack
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Yeah, and on that job you met your wife, Morgan Fairchild, which whom you have had sex.
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What ever you want to believe. But these "the sky is falling" comments are getting old. I've read slashdot for 17 years at this point and during college I have believed them. I was terrified of my 30s. That time came and went. I went out job searching and found none of the problems I had been hearing about.
Then I figured out at work exactly 'who' those people were making these comments. They're useless warm bodies that are only kept around because it's too much of a hassle to get rid of them, for now. They
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Nah, I believe you dude. I was just poking fun.
And the most relevant skill is being able to pay off your student loan while spending 50% of your income on housing costs. Guys like you and me got our educations back in the day when the expense was pretty trivial. I actually graduated with more money than I started school with, thanks to tuition waivers and working as a TA. It's
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while spending 50% of your income on housing costs.
Then vote for massive deregulation of housing in urban areas. Every US city should look like Hong Kong with 60-story apartment towers!
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chosen to live in an incredibly high cost of living area of the country
I live in the middle of the country on 20+acres. ~3000 sqft house with land and a pole barn was around $250k. I earn ~3x the median household income of $40k for my county.
chosen to spend more hours
No.
chosen to educate yourself further in your non working hours,
1. Mostly during my working hours.
2. Oh god not an education. Stop. Make the learning stop!. No wonder your type can't find a job.
all in order to compete with your fellow workers who can't switch jobs without losing their visas.
All of my American peers aren't on Visas. The Indian ones live in India.
anyone else having unreasonable expectations.
Like I've said of your type before. You graduated college and thought you were done learning until retirement. You want to sit around do
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Congratulations, your compensation package is better than most tech workers at Fortune 500 companies. You are the exception, not the rule.
$120k may be better than the average compensation package for tech workers at Fortune 500 companies, but it isn't much higher. If I go to a recruiter trying to find a quality developer with 10 years of experience in the Chicago suburbs, I am not going to get any quality applicants offering less than six figures. One of our software dev VPs was recently nearly fired because he had an open position for six months when the CTO found out he was only offering $80k for the role. You can get a decent college grad
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Really? Then why is it when I change my status on LinkedIn to 'looking' I get hounded by recruiters? Why did it take applying to all of a single job listing to find a new job?
Maybe 90% of the companies you apply to toss your resume because you don't have anything relevant on there. Any number of my peers could find a job with out any problems.
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live in the right place.
The right place to live is where the job is. Our ancestors followed the food out of Africa. Grandpa went where the CCC said there was work. If you plant your feet and whine there aren't any jobs it's not the job's problem, it's yours.
Maybe you're lying about the skills you do have, or at least stretching the truth lots.
Or actually have relevant skills.
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.... That's still better than I grew up, better than my grandparents on back grew up. It wasn't too long ago that you didn't know if anyone was a live unless you somehow saw them again in person.
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I get a constant flood of recruiters whether or not I am set to looking. They aren't actually looking for me. They are looking for me to reject their position so that they can justify an H1B visa.
How do I know? They're offering jobs in cities I do not live in, which require experience far, far, far below mine. Position wants 3 years, I have 20. Pay is commiserate to 3 years experience.
Anyone who has spent a nanosecond recruiting knows that I will not be interested in the position. Which is exactly why
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Your skillset.
Are the big keywords I search for. Python, Matlab, Data Analytics all turn up noise. Also a smattering of SQL, Linux, Cloud, etc knowledge that really isn't relevant to the jobs I apply to but has definitely come in handy.
What area of the country you are in.
Flyover Country. But I've found and applied to jobs across the US.
Your age.
Closer to 40 than 30.
Where did you get your degree.
Big 10.
Now, are there any details that could guide me on what skills I'm missing? Nope!
Well, I don't know what skills you have.
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What should I tell my "old" co-workers? People that also stayed up to date with relevant technology?
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E-mails? I'm getting phone calls.
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require lots of extra hours
I guess they might if you're slow. It's more 'get your work done' not "Sit in a desk for 40 hours" style job.
a very broad yet specialized skill set,
Define broad and specialized.
lots of stress?
Not in the least.
Yeah but think how much better it could be (Score:2)
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While some of IT pays relatively well compared to other careers, it's mostly that other careers have stagnated or shrank. Plus, IT requires constant retraining/relearning (usually on your own dime), and has agism and RSI problems associated with it. It's a risky long-term career.
While IT has done relatively well compared to other careers, it's still fairly stagnated itself if you look at longer term trends and post-40 IT salaries.
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Re:Companies want cheap workers (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because perhaps because they don't want to share a 1 bedroom apartment with 20 other males and would instead like to have a family and a decent standard of living. We cannot win in a race to the bottom. Nobody wins that, not even the damnable H1-B workers that are taking those underpaying jobs. They are destroying the very thing they came here for.
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smoking hot is of course in the eye of the beer-holder. I think she's at best average, I give her about a 5 - 5.5, of course I'm from Southern Cali so am exposed to significantly better looking women.
Oh yay (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a trick. Get an axe. (Score:5, Insightful)
As the article alludes to, most of these same tech companies just left the administration en mass after the 'very reluctant/weak/late condemnation of nazis' debacle.
This is effectively taking proposals that have already been thrown at them, and using it as an excuse to get large amounts of money from these jilted companies, and 'manage' them at their whim.
Here's what these companies should do: Create their OWN organization to manage any funds they want to use effectively, and just ignore the noises from this administration.
Better than letting DeVos have any potential control over it.
Re:It's a trick. Get an axe. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure why they're paying attention to the Administration at all. Nobody else is. Congress is basically acting as if the White House was vacant (which, in a metaphorical sense, it is)
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I'm not sure why they're paying attention to the Administration at all. Nobody else is. Congress is basically acting as if the White House was vacant (which, in a metaphorical sense, it is)
Nobody's paying attention? They can't shut up about it.
Re:It's a trick. Get an axe. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, you have succinctly described the "new normal": people can't stop talking about stuff they aren't really paying attention to.
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I'm not sure why they're paying attention to the Administration at all.
That's the real story here, imo.
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Yeah, nobody's paying attention to President Trump <eyeroll>
He just tricked half the NFL players into embarrassing themselves last weekend - the guy's a fucking genius at manipulating left-wingers. They're not only paying attention, they're dancing to his tune.
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Wait, you're suggesting that people and companies should do their own thing, instead of routing it through the federal government ?
What a crazy idea!
But...how in heavens could anything get accomplished if the government's not running it?
COMPUTER SCIENCE!! (Score:2)
The only high tech job in the entire world, get ya coders here get ya coders here! o fuck we need engineers and those maf dorks too back to India maybe next time guys
Weak Journalism (Score:5, Interesting)
the White House later today that tasks the Department of Education to devote at least $200 million of its grant funds each year to so-called STEM fields
So how much does the Department of Education (DoE) currently devote to STEM field grants? You are looking at around a $70 billion budget, with tens of billions already going to various grants. What is even the point of releasing this kind of news if no one can even tell if it is an improvement on what we already do?
Re:Weak Journalism (Score:5, Insightful)
What is even the point of releasing this kind of news if no one can even tell if it is an improvement on what we already do?
The difference is now you know we're doing it. Did you know before this story came out how much we were spending on STEM? No? Well you do now. Winning bigly!
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What is even the point of releasing this kind of news if no one can even tell if it is an improvement on what we already do?
The difference is now you know we're doing it. Did you know before this story came out how much we were spending on STEM? No? Well you do now.
No, I still don't. I know that the Department of Education has been asked to spend at least $200M of existing funds on CS. But I don't know how much we were spending before, and I don't even if we're increasing the funding level.
Winning bigly!
So much winning. Trump did say that we'd get tired of it. I certainly am.
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This would be in line with similar programs considering that the federal government spend $100 million on getting hispanic students into STEM classes.
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Quite probably more than 200M. I know it was well funded. It's a common practice to talk about how big an absolute number you're assigning to a program when cutting it.
Fun fact, the websites about STEM funding on the Dept. of Ed. website still talk exclusively about Obama and his programs.
theodp (Score:2)
More probable outcome: (Score:2)
This is more likely just going to further suppress wages in these fields with an even greater glut of workers that they won't pay decent wages to and continue outsourcing work to other nations.
All smoke screen (Score:2)
to distract from other issues going against common sense and logical steps for the common good of a nation and - world as whole.
Just look at this tinderbox North-Korea and who plays with matches on it. Can light up any time, nothing is learned from history by an Idiot!
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I wonder how much all the military action in NK is going to cost us. Probably far in excess of $200 million. I have no idea why an English speaking orangutan has this level of authority.
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$200M isn't going to "supercharge" squat (Score:5, Insightful)
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Naa, $2B would still be a joke. Make that $20B per year and you start getting somewhere.
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Indeed. And it is pretty important to let kids see and try a lot of different things.
Supercharge? Is that like "supersize"? (Score:3)
I.e. more fat, more sugar, less agility and less quality everywhere? I think I see where Trump is going with that. He is trying to re-create the success of the fast-food industry in education! Genius!
Flies to honey (Score:2)
Publicity Stunt For Ivanka (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't understand why Ivanka is involved with this project. Sure, we need more women in STEM, but I feel that Ivanka has always been more about the superficial feel good cosmetic of sales and marketing, antithetic to unglamorous logic driven grunt work of STEM. Oh', I forgot, she is the president's daughter.
Other may disagrees, but I look at this as a $200 million dollar public funded campaign effort to groom Ivanka for the Trump dynasty.
Slowly we drift into the idiocracy. . . .
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I think you're right, this $200M is largely a feel-good measure, primarily for the sake of appearance. The problem is that we really can't get much more than that anymore. People who know STEM well *and* have a desire to teach are rare to begin with; those who are willing to teach below the college level and put up with the political headaches, endless grading, just-above-the-poverty-line wages, and general classroom drama are one in a million. Meanwhile, computers themselves are becoming evermore locked do
No kids until the companies bring the jobs (Score:4, Interesting)
End the H1-B and J1 programs first, then us parents will talk about giving you our kids. Until then my kid's going into Medical because they have a bloody Union (the AMA) and have so far resisted mass importation of cheap labor.
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Whatever gave you the idea that you have any control over what line of work your children go into?
Government picking winners and losers... (Score:3, Interesting)
Whether it is lead by Trump or Obama, government should not — indeed, must not — involve itself in the markets, including the higher education market. Not the government of a free country, anyway...
The Central Planning, that Statists like so much, is both inefficient [atlasnetwork.org] and opressive [mises.org].
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So the Scandinavian countries are inefficient and opressive [sic]? Thanks for the information, nobody in them seems to notice!
This (Score:2)
cuts $9.2B dollars, wants credit for $.2B increase (Score:5, Insightful)
okay so let me get this straight, trump cuts 9.2 billion dollars from the DOE's budget, wants credit for $200M that he didn't even fund - he's just saying that of the money already allocated to grants, this much should go to STEM.
Meanwhile, when obama was president, he proposed a 4 billion dollar inceare in DOE's budget to go specifically to CS education, but that didn't pass because of republicans.
So the net score is: Obama +4 billion (blocked by republicans), Trump -9.2 billion (republicans love it).
And he wants to sell this as him supporting STEM?!?
You can't support science and current religeon (Score:2)
If he does truly support education, he should change the head of the department of education from a flat earthed, anti-science person first; or would coming out in support of science cause them to drop their support, can they blame "liberals", for "eroding his morals"?
More accurate subject line (Score:2)
Trump attaches name to program that does something for somebody, in attempt to coverup ineptitude by throwing random shit at wall and seeing what sticks...
He couldn't cite one fact about the healthcare bill(s) he was pushing. He didn't know the difference between medicare and medicaid. He doesn't know the difference between health insurance and life insurance. He doesn't even know anything about the things he does care about, much less the things he doesn't care about. He'll still put his name on it, tho
Re:What's in it for him? (Score:4, Insightful)
What a useless and incredibly vague question. What's in it for any president/politician? Money, public service, fame, patriotism, votes, bored, or a combination?
It's bad enough reading articles with no proof accuse Trump of crazy conspiracies, but to imply without evening try to come up with a conspiracy or evil motive is just lazy.
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Re:What's in it for him? (Score:5, Funny)
Otherwise he wouldn't be doing it.
Easy. A computer big and huge enough that it can someday house his consciousness when his astonishingly healthy body [deadline.com] someday craps out, so he can continue to MAGA [shopify.com] for all time until America was won so much even his most ardent, NFL-hating [lakana.com] MAGA fans are tired of winning [youtube.com]. It will be huge. It will be gold. It will be huge and gold, and they will call it the "BFC T-1000" and it will rule and it will be incredible, people, believe me.
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Votes? Heck no, most voters don't know or care about IT labor. Big corporations simply want cheap IT labor and are lobbying heavily to get it. IT is becoming a bigger part of their costs, and so they are looking for ways to reduce the costs. If they can't get cheap H1B's, then they want cheap Americans. Thus, if schools flood the market with IT workers, corporations can pay less. Many graduates may still be unemployed or unemployable, but that's NOT co's concern; they only care about profits. Unemployment a
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IT jobs in my area of the US are far and few but the number of people with degrees working in other fields is staggering. I've not kept in close contact with everyone I went to college with but of those that I do keep in touch with none actually work in a tech related field. My brother has a cs degree and does maintenance for the local school district.
People sometime ask why I've stuck in my position for so long because there is no real opportunity for advancement. It's not that I don't get offers it's that
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the left can just lie back and chill
Please, do exactly that. Please keep confusing fake celebrity outrage for public sentiment. Please keep believing the same polls they fed you before Trump won the election. Don't change a thing.
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True, all of it.
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What is surprising is that there are still Trump supporters out there.
I thought Larry the Cable Guy cleared that up.
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What is surprising is that there are still Trump supporters out there.
Trump supporters are total fucking strangers to the truth. It's why they're Trump supporters in the first place.
Re: Donald Trump is President Obama's BITCH!! (Score:2)
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Funny how being a smooth-talker can make all the difference.
Compared to Trump, Forrest Gump is a fucking 'smooth-talker'.
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There will be zero nukes traded with the USA and DPRK... Trust me... There may be bullets, mortars, and other conventional kinetic weapons used, but no nukes.
First, DPRK may have blown a couple of holes in a mountain or two using nuclear devices and flown a ICBM into the pacific ocean, but they've not demonstrated the ability to put the two things together. They are getting close, but it's still no cigar for Little Kim if he decides to pop a nuke. I doubt he can, yet....
Second DPRK simply cannot have t
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Re: What an embarrassing buffoon (Score:2)
And we are supposed to respect the opinion of an anonymous coward? I think not.
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It's a game changer! Promising to devote $200M/yr is like $4/year for each student. I admit it's not new money, and they are spending more than that already on STEM, but still, it's a great pro-science initiative. I'm sure Betsy DeVos will spend it wisely on consultants and charter school initiatives. Liberals will be shocked at how amazing the results will be.
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And flood the STEM fields with people with neither talent nor affinity for them.
Let me tell you the problem with education, which is that we have this model of higher education that dates from the time where the doubling time for the volume of human knowledge was measured in centuries. A medieval gentleman could attend a university and obtain a pretty good grounding of everything that his culture knew, then go home with a cart full of books (if he could afford them) to start a library that a hundred years
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Keep the grades and standards the same.
STEM isn't about learning a single programming language or a single methodology, it's about getting the base and then expanding it. If you're a Computer Engineer or Embedded System Engineer, which I have a degree in both, and you don't know JavaScript, C, C#, MySQL, Maria, MongoDB, Ruby, PHP and a number of other programming languages then you're out of shape and will have a very hard time getting a job.
It's not what you learned 20 years ago that you base your career path on, it
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You think you can force people into STEM and they'll all turn out to be good at it?
I think we can look at Indian IT workers to see how that will go. India has its share of talented people, and because India is huge that translates to a lot of very talented people. But the demand for IT talent there has produced three classes of people:
(1) People who have a natural talent for the work.
(2) People who by dint of effort have learned to be good at the work.
(3) People who by dint of effort have learned to be g
I'm guessing about the same (Score:2)
And can we stop dumping all over the liberal arts? You know Journalism is a liberal arts degree, right? And History? Jeez, and you wonder why things are going to pot in this country.
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there are no jobs and haven't been for at least 10 years
And what planet do you live on?! I hope some youngster doesn't read your comment and get discouraged, we've been actively trying to push more kids into CS.
The large company I work for, which has offices in many major centers across US and Canada, usually always has opportunities for skilled IT staff. Sure there are local cyclical downturns in job markets, but fact remains a CS degree is a ticket to a very upper middle class lifestyle anywhere in NA if you have a bit of smarts. Especially if you get in
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I'll stop dumping on the liberal arts when the collective groups of study which make it up, stop being a repre