It's a mixed bag, salaries tend to be a bit lighter, but you get an honest to goodness pension. Depending on what State and what department, there are other goodies as well. Where I am I get 3 weeks of vacation (starting), 3.5 weeks of sick time (unused sick time carries over year to year and can be cashed out at retirement to pay for health insurance), 4.5 days of "personal time" each year, along with all of the state holidays. Makes the work-life balance a little more easily managed ;)

-Rick

To add to this, I work for the State these days. Coming from a private sector shrinkwrap software company where the median age was ~28 and the average tenure was ~2 years, to the State where the average age is probably closer to 35-40, and the average tenure is 10+ years, it was a huge shock.

There is good and bad that comes with it. I've seen more complacency with jobs/technology. People aren't interested in making a jump to newer technologies and patterns because they don't feel like they have to. But on the bright side, you get to skip out on the vast majority of the junior dev shop drama.

But if you're north of 35, look at your local state agencies, no one would blink an eye at a 40-something applying for a job. And certs, while useful for getting you through the resume screening, are dramatically less valuable than networking and having someone in the department that will recommend you for an interview.

-Rick

Canadians ;)

The way they described it was similar to how my German friends described it. After high school you have to do something; college, apprenticeship, peace corps/community service, or military. You can't just graduate and keep flipping burgers.

Every Canadian I know is either former Mounty or Army. There may be some nuance to it that I'm not aware of, or perhaps I am ill informed.

-Rick

To be fair though, both Canada and Switzerland have forced conscription. So all of their native able bodied gun owners have completely weapons handling training at the military level.

-Rick

Here's the thing, there are some forms of nerve damage that we currently don't have a cure for, there are far more that we don't even understand well enough to have an idea for a cure, and there are some that are so poorly understood, even significant swaths of the medical community doubt that they are real and accuse patients of being drug seekers.

For example: Fibromyalgia. It isn't a disease in it's own right, it is a classification of a set of symptoms that have not been able to be attached to a source. There are lots of theories and progress is being made in the field. But when the causes could be genetic, dietary, environmental, psychological, or even sleep related, any step forward could be helpful for some subset of FM sufferers, but leave the rest without aid.

If this approach can be made to work, it would mean that virtually all of the FM sufferers in the world could lead a normal life, while at the same time research continues on the underlying causes of their conditions.

When you wake up every day and have to see your spouse, your child, or your friends in agony because for no meaningful reason their brain decides that they should feel like every joint is coated with sandpaper, that every muscle is strained and torn, that every tendon is inflamed, then any option, even one that profits some greedy ass in a suit, becomes a miracle.

-Rick

"The "we could have a Chernobyl every year" argument is just stupid."

YES! Absolutely! That's what started this whole chain off.

-Rick

Uhg, this isn't knee jerk opposition to nuclear.

I'm not opposed to the continued use of nuclear power.

I'm in favor of moving to modern nuclear power facilities in place of the old ones. Yes, a 60 year old reactor can keep on chugging for another 20 years, but I'd much rather have a reactor designed with the safety of graphite or thorium running in their place for the next 80 years.

My opposition is not to nuclear power in general. My opposition is to saying that "we could have a Chernobyl every year..." without catastrophic repercussions.

-Rick

Of the resumes, numerous were of quality. Of the applicants, I still have 8 more on my interview list, but 2 appear to be of high quality so far.

If I am unable to fill the remaining positions from my current list, I have the other resumes from people who like to write novels to go through.

Similarly, for a slew of mainframe developers I received 60 some resumes, about the same for software PMs, high 40s for a handful of BI/ETL/DBA/Reporting positions.

Filling a couple of spots for a modern technology really isn't hard to find quality folks. Filling 9 mainframe spots is rough though.

-Rick

I don't care about killing >a fish. I care about killing off fisheries. I don't care about killing off some bacteria. I care about killing off significant swaths of bacteria that allow other more resilient strains to take over and negatively impact our agriculture industry.

This isn't me being some high and mighty tree hugger. This is me being concerned that there are dramatic indirect impacts on our environment that aren't included in a 'direct human casualties' metric.

Coal and oil are also highly concerning. This isn't a free pass for them either.

There are safer nuclear options, as mentioned in previous posts, thorium salt reactors seem like a huge step forward in the safety department. Even with traditional uranium reactors, as you point out, massive improvements have been designed over the last 50+ years. But we are still depending on reactors that were built in the 50's and 60's that had an original planned lifespan of 40 years, but keep getting extended.

-Rick

"Most of it's green. Like most northern areas if you take pictures at the right time you can get very dead looking terrain."

The problem isn't the green, the problem is the growing mass of dead tissue that is decomposing at an incredibly slow rate due to the lack of (or greatly reduced population of) bacteria, fungus, and molds that aid in the decomposing process.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/...

As stated previously, a single incident like Chernobyl can be isolated and mitigated. A 'Chernobyl event every year' on the other hand, can lead to a cascading effect where microbial life is so effected that the standard processes our ecologies depend on shift dramatically.

"I suggest you check your research. They've been testing/developing pebble bed reactors, but they've run into issues such that they're not replacements for rod type reactors yet."

Fair point, I was under the mistaken impression that France have taken a pair of pebble bed reactors live many years ago. That's what I get for trusting my recollection of a 30 year old news story ;)

"My point has always been not that nuclear is harmless, but that it's less harmful than the alternatives while still remaining affordable(minus political stuff)."

Nuclear without incident is less harmful. A single incident is still less harmful. But a sustained practice that leads to a significant incident each year can have a much larger impact by means of cascading ecological change.

And when you get back to the root issue, $/kW, we wind up in an interesting position. http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/a... has a nice breakdown of what we can look forward to. And the question then is, if Nuclear is no cheaper than wind/hydro, and comes with dramatically more risk, why aren't we investing in more wind/hydro solutions instead?

-Rick

"1. The total death impact from Chernobyl is roughly 4k people"

Again, I'm not comparing the immediate death tool. Taking that approach is penny wise, pound foolish. I'm pointing out that while a single limited nuclear catastrophe can occur with limited repercussions, a continuous series of such incidents creates a feedback loop where the secondary impact is far worse than the initial impact.

"2. The exclusion zone is 1k km, 1 a year would add up to 1M 'off limits', most of it indistinguishable from a natural park"

A "natural park"? Really? Have you seen what the controlled area looks like? I'll give you a hint, all of the dead wood, plant matter, animal life, etc... doesn't biodegrade. It just stays there, dead, dehydrated. No rot. no mold. Because the levels of radiation through out the area, while not immediately harmful to humans, is strong enough to kill off bacteria and fungi. There is nothing natural about Chernobyl.

"3. 1 Chernobyl/year is an absolute worst case scenario."

I whole heartedly disagree. A Chernobyl in Nebraska is a vastly worse case scenario.

"4. Estimates range from 4k to 93k deaths from the accident and resulting radiation"

Again, this is only >Human deaths. If you look at the full ecological impact that number is dramatically higher. As it is for coal and oil as well.

If you put your blinders on and look at only the direct and immediate impact on humans, yeah, nuclear looks really good. Take a step back an look at the nuclear impact on regional ecologies, and it doesn't look quite so rosy.

That said, I'm not opposed to nuclear power. I'm very interested in thorium-salt reactors. They offer much of the benefits of traditional nuclear reactors with a fraction of the risk. Even sticking with traditional uranium reactor, we need to dramatically improve our technology. These 60+ year old reactors have to be taken offline and replaced with modern technology. Hell, we're still using fuel rods in most of the US nuclear plants. Pebble beds have been in operation since the 1980's and we still haven't made the jump. Even better options are available today.

-Rick

" If it was really so dangerous, why do we have more deaths because of steam accidents than nuclear ones?"

That statement is only true if you apply it only to human deaths. If you include sea life, I'd expect oil and nuclear to blow steam out of the water (no pun intended).

"We'd save lives going nuclear even if we had a Chernobyl every year."

Penny smart, pound retarded. Sure, we'd have less human deaths as a direct impact, but after enough Chernobyls, we would start have serious issues with ecological balance. Crops, fisheries, radioactive contamination, the whole system would lead to massive collapse after a decade. Sure, hardly anyone would die from the immediate impact of the annual nuclear meltdown, but once we start ticking off the body count of the millions dying to radiation poisoning and starvation, we might want to reconsider that path.

-Rick

I am corrected. Thanks!

-Rick

I'm in the middle of a hiring surge for a major project right now.

I put out a request for 4 Java web developers with 8 years dev experience, hands on time with Struts/Spring/JQuery, bonus points for PeopleSoft/DB2.

I received 77 resumes. 34 of those did not meet the basic requirements (8 years experience, struts/spring/JQuery).

Of the remaining 33, 17 had resumes in excess of 6 pages and were set aside for a second pass if needed.

Of the remaining 16, 4 we ruled out due to concerns with communication or technical skills. If you are going to include a code sample, make damn sure it meets your requirements. And for god's sake, have someone do a grammatical review of your resume and run a spell checker!

Of the 12, 8 were selected for interviews.

Of the 8, I've interviewed 6 so far.
1 was a rock star.
1 looks like a rock star, but I want references first.
3 sounded like they were perfectly fine junior devs, but not at the level I need or expect from someone with 8 years of experience.
And 1 we interviewed over the phone, and I'm 99% sure they were googleing for answers to questions like: "What does 'thread safe' mean?" and "What are generics?"

So if there is a shortage in the tech field, I'm not seeing it in Java, C#, DBA, ETL, BI, or project managers. And this is in Madison, Wisconsin. Not some major metro area. Many of my candidates are immigrant contractors either naturalized or on visas. Probably a 1/4 of them are already local to south-central Wisconsin.

I am seeing shortages in two IT fields:
1) Mainframe developers
2) Recruiters who can tell a good candidate apart from their own asshole.

-Rick

I like your point, but the "Broken Window" theory is an false argument. The gist being that if you break a window, the glass maker must make a new pane of glass, the delivery man must carry the window, the carpenter must install the window, etc... and thus economic value is created by the breaking of the window.

It is false because the economy has not created new value, instead significant effort is being spent on existing value. The opportunity cost here is that the same effort could have been spent on creating new value and causing economic growth.

-Rick