Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Fun in the Workplace Already!!!!

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As I'm about to take on a major leadership role in a large tech firm in Germany, one of the things I am tasked with is to find ways to make working at the firm more fun and interesting for the IT people there. There's a number of development teams, Backend, Frontend, Dev-Ops, and QA, each with 2-5 Developers and a Manager. The teams comprise an international mix, which makes it even more of a challenge, and some are single, some have kids.

So, if you were a developer there, what would do it for you? What would make it so that things were so fun at work you'd just couldn't wait to arrive?

I am all open to all suggestions and comments, I already have some ideas, but would love to hear from you!

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Future-Proof Jobs?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: My niece, who is graduating from high school, has asked me for some career advice. Since I work in data processing, my first thought was to recommend a degree course in computer science or computer engineering. However, after reading books by Jeremy Rifkin (The Third Industrial Revolution) and Ray Kurzweil (How to Create a Mind), I now wonder whether a career in information technology is actually better than, say, becoming a lawyer or a construction worker. While the two authors differ in their political persuasions (Rifkin is a Green leftist and Kurzweil is a Libertarian transhumanist), both foresee an increasingly automated future where most of humanity would become either jobless or underemployed by the middle of the century. While robots take over the production of consumer hardware, Big Data algorithms like the ones used by Google and IBM appear to be displacing even white collar tech workers. How long before the only ones left on the payroll are the few "rockstar" programmers and administrators needed to maintain the system? Besides politics and drug dealing, what jobs are really future-proof? Wouldn't it be better if my niece took a course in the Arts, since creativity is looking to be one of humanity's final frontiers against the inevitable Rise of the Machines?

Submission + - Workaholism in America Is Hurting the Economy (newrepublic.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Work/life balance is a constant problem in the tech industry. Even though experienced and mature engineers have been vocal in fighting it, every new generation buys into the American cultural identity of excessive work being a virtue. Each generation suffers for it, and the economy does, too. This article backs up that wisdom with hard numbers: "The 40-hour workweek is mostly a thing of the past. Ninety-four percent of professional workers put in 50 or more hours, and nearly half work 65 or above. All workers have managed to cut down on our time on the job by 112 hours over the last 40 years, but we’re far behind other countries: The French cut down by 491 hours, the Dutch by 425, and Canadians by 215 in the same time period. ... This overwork shows up in our sleep. Out of five developed peers, four other countries sleep more than us. That has again worsened over the years. In 1942, more than 80 percent of Americans slept seven hours a night or more. Today, 40 percent sleep six hours or less. A lack of sleep makes us poorer workers: People who sleep less than seven hours a night have a much harder time concentrating and getting work done."

Submission + - China Starts Outsourcing from ... the U.S. (yahoo.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Burdened with Alabama's highest unemployment rate, long abandoned by textile mills and furniture plants, Wilcox County, Alabama, desperately needs jobs. And the jobs are coming from China. Henan's Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube Group opened a plant here last month, employing 300 locals. Chinese companies invested a record $14 billion in the United States last year, according to the Rhodium Group research firm. Collectively, they employ more than 70,000 Americans, up from virtually none a decade ago. Powerful forces — narrowing wage gaps (Chinese wages have been doubling every few years), tumbling U.S. energy prices, the rising Yuan — up 30% over the decade — are pulling Chinese companies across the Pacific. Perhaps very soon, Chinese workers will start protesting their jobs being outsourced to the cheap labors in the U.S.

Comment Re:Want to code? (Score 2) 548

by pijokela (#47284313) Attached to: Girls Take All In $50 Million Google Learn-to-Code Initiative

They will become your next project manager. Then they can stop learning, because in management roles that is not required. (It would be useful though.)

At least around here, we have a reasonable amount of "women in IT." They're just not coding. There are a lot of women in management, testing, QA, UX - anything that does not mean actually writing software. Some of them have a university degree that prepared them for writing software, but most escape that role very quickly after graduation. I'm pretty sure they could do it at least as well as the men can - they just don't want to.

Submission + - Climate scientist distances himself from "suppression" story

Submitted by Sockatume
Sockatume writes: Prof Lennart Bengtsson of the University of Reading, who made waves last week by comparing the environment in climate research to McCarthy-era America, has distanced himself from the Times story that popularised his remarks. In a statement, Prof. Bengtsson explains: "I do not believe there is any systematic 'cover-up' of scientific evidence on climate change or that academics' work is being 'deliberately suppressed', as the Times front page suggests. I am worried by a wider trend that science is gradually being influenced by political views. Policy decisions need to be based on solid fact. I was concerned that the Environmental Research Letters reviewer's comments suggested his or her opinion was not objective or based on an unbiased assessment of the scientific evidence."

Submission + - New Poll: Majority of eastern Ukrainians do not back Russia (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Billly Gates
Billly Gates writes: A new independent poll which includes east Ukraine shows quite a different picture than what the armed men in camouflage holding Russian made weapons want you to believe regardless of the voting. Kiev has accused the separatists of really being Russian intelligence agents disguised as peaceful Ukrainian protesters taking over buildings and TV stations and destabilizing the country. A new poll shows even in Eastern Ukraine that the majority do not want independence or be part of Russia. While joining the EU is not something the majority of eastern Ukrainians want the rest of the country is in favor of becoming European at 56% in favor. What does this say about other former Soviet Union countries like Belarus, Poland, Romania, and Georgia when voters decide something that is not in favor of Moscow? Putin seems to be winning the propaganda war which shows a different picture even in western media of an illegitimate government taking over by radical racists again't a country that wants to be part of Russia.

Comment Re:Overpopulation (Score 2) 118

Having more people dying will not stop population growth. Even in Africa AIDS treatment works enough that they can just have more children to compensate for the people dying with AIDS. We need children to stay alive so that people will not want more then two children in their family. This has happened in Asia and it can happen in Africa.

And Africa will have 4 billion people. There are already so many kids there that it will happen and nothing - especially AIDS - can stop it.

Look at the presentations of this guy for more info:
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_...

Submission + - Michelle Obama's Mother's Day address (whitehouse.gov)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: First Lady Michelle Obama delivers a wonderful Mother's Day address in which she discusses the horrible kidnapping of over 200 girls in Nigeria. The girls were kidnapped as part of an effort to keep them from being educated.

Comment Re:BMI is 2d but people are 3d (Score 1) 329

by pijokela (#46966253) Attached to: Gaining On the US: Most Europeans To Be Overweight By 2030

Yes, a better way of measuring would be nice.

My point was that in addition to the other problems that BMI has it also has a problem of making tall people overweight. And as populations get taller and taller on average, this measurement problem increases the percentage of overweight people. For this simple problem it would be enough to just create a new formula using height and weight or even just use something above 25 as the overweight limit for taller people.

Comment BMI is 2d but people are 3d (Score 3, Insightful) 329

by pijokela (#46965545) Attached to: Gaining On the US: Most Europeans To Be Overweight By 2030

The formula for BMI is weight(kg) / heigth(m) * height(m). This formula only has two terms for height, but in reality I'm a 3d person. What I mean with this is that it is easier for a short person to be "normal weigth" in BMI. As people on average get taller and taller more and more people are going to be overweight. On the other hand many of my male friends are lifting weights and they are all "overweight" while clearly they are not fat.

So, while the problem is probably real and severe, I'd like to see a better way of measuring this stuff.

Submission + - Cost Skyrockets for United States' Share of ITER Fusion Project (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: ITER, the international fusion experiment under construction in Cadarache, France, aims to prove that nuclear fusion is a viable power source by creating a "burning plasma" that produces more energy than the machine itself consumes. Although that goal is at least 20 years away, ITER is already burning through money at a prodigious pace. The United States is only a minor partner in the project, which began construction in 2008. But the U.S. contribution to ITER will total $3.9 billion—roughly four times as much as originally estimated—according to a new cost estimate released yesterday. That is about $1.4 billion higher than a 2011 cost estimate, and the numbers are likely to intensify doubts among some members of Congress about continuing the U.S. involvement in the project.

Submission + - "The Expert" is Lauris Beinerts viral comedy sketch about engineering (leaseweblabs.com)

Submitted by Maurits van der Schee
Maurits van der Schee writes: “The Expert” is the title of the short comedy sketch Lauris Beinarts (Google+) posted a last week on his Youtube account. It went viral and is heading for half a million views in under 7 days. It is about a “Funny business meeting illustrating how hard it is for an engineer to fit into the corporate world.” The video is starring: Orion Lee, James Marlowe, Abdiel LeRoy, Ewa Wojcik, Tatjana Sendzimir and is written & directed by Lauris Beinerts. It is based on a short story by Alexey Berezin titled “The Meeting” (in Russian) or translated by Google.

Comment Re:I went back to corporate America because Obamac (Score 1) 578

by pijokela (#46473389) Attached to: White House: Get ACA Insurance Coverage, Launch Start-Ups

How on earth will a doctor find a tumor in my ear for $50? With that money, they could at most spend 20 minutes with me and probably only about 10 with the rest for reporting the findings to a computer. With so much to cover in a human, they could only find the tumor if a said that I think there is something in my ear... and if I was suspecting something then I would go see a doctor anyway?

Now, I agree with the point you were making: yearly check-ups are worth it. But I find the example pretty hard to swallow.

Slashdot Top Deals

May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual!

Close