I do systems engineering work for a professional services/software company. Development is fully Agile with a capital A, whether or not it makes sense for a particular project. On the systems side of the house, we have another particular religion called ITIL which lots of companies have jumped into with both feet. The problem with both of these concepts is that they are adhered to, almost to a comical level, even if it's painfully obvious that parts of it don't fit.

Adhering to all of ITIL, for example, is a really good way to ensure your production systems almost never change. The number of people and sheer volume of paperwork, tickets and meetings to get anything even scheduled for a change in a "true ITIL" system is beyond insane. The same goes for incident management -- we have so many single-task focused "resolver groups" that I have no idea how anyone knows how any of our systems operate end-to-end. ITIL is great for mainframe systems, safety sensitive stuff, and networks which never change.

"True Agile" and "True Waterfall" are opposite ends of the spectrum. Agile gets you very fast development, at the expense of pinning down any sort of architecture in the beginning. Waterfall often results in software you have to throw away because the requirements change out from under you. However, there are some things that require at least some discipline, both in systems and development. No systems guy would ever advocate just logging in and making random changes on a production system to see what happens. No smart developer/architect charged with writing something that underpins tons and tons of other things would advocate swapping out the core components without at least some backward compatibility thrown in. The prpblem is that "gurus" make their money selling management on these methods. In the case of both Agile and ITIL, it's a manager's dream -- everyone becomes a replaceable unit and business requests can get promoted to production in one Sprint.

From what I've seen, especially with math, the terms have changed but the entire way it's presented has also changed. For example, I have always been a poor math student unless what I'm learning can be applied to something real-world -- I have more of an engineer's brain than a mathematician's. All the algebra, trig, etc. that was force-fed into my brain in high school only started making sense when I started struggling through my college chemistry curriculum and finding out that it was actually useful for something.

My memories of elementary school math consist of endless repetition of arithmetic facts and simply memorizing procedures for things like solving ratio problems, working with fractions, etc. And every high school graduate instinctively remembers "x = (-b +/- sqrt(b^2 - 4ac))/2a" whether or not it made any sense at the time. It seems like the new curriculum acknowledges that computers exist and focuses more on developing the reasoning/estimating skills than the old-school math we were taught. I think parents are really confused by this.

My state (New York) which had semi-decent education standards to begin with, recently switched to the Common Core curriculum and it's really stirring up a mess. Partially, it's the mandatory testing that parents are opting their children out of, but it's also being tied to a bunch of other things. For example, teachers now have to deal with the same BS performance evaluations that corporate employees do, and a huge chunk of their rating is based on these test scores. They were evaluated in the past, but it was understood that there was no objective way to evaluate teacher performance with variable student performance. Now, new teachers will lose their jobs if their classes don't do well on these tests, with no regard for whether the teacher has a bunch of losers or geniuses in their class. I'm not a teacher, but I'm definitely on the teachers' side in this case. I would hate to spend the time to get a teacher certification (not impossible, but harder in NY than many states) and have my job be at risk due to factors I can't control. For example, most new teachers can't get jobs in the nice affluent school districts because there are tons more qualified applicants who want to work there, so they usually have to start off teaching in a crappy school district. Crappy districts tend to have kids who have crappy parents. (And yes, affluent districts have helicopter parents that make teachers' lives miserable, but that's another story.) If you have a class full of students who have bad home lives, parents who don't care, or have been socially promoted for years, they're going to do badly on these standardized tests and your performance rate will suffer through no fault of your own.

The other thing I've seen is that the material used to teach the common core curriculum is really different from stuff we saw in earlier times. I think that's another big thing -- parents feel they can't help their kids with homework. However, it's the material, not the curriculum itself. Blame the educational publishers for that, not the standards.

One thing I definitely don't agree with Bill Gates on is his love of charter schools. These just suck more money away from the public system and funnel it into corporate interests' pockets, making the public system weaker. What Gates or anyone doesn't understand is that education won't improve until it's valued by everyone. The reason China, India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, etc. are ahead of us in test performance isn't the curriculum -- they push their students like crazy from both directions (teachers and parents.) Kids in these countries spend many more hours in school than US kids, and have information drilled into their heads. That's what needs to happen if we want to compete with these countries in the future. In the case of India and China, school performance is basically some kids' only ticket to a better life given the population and structure of society. Things might be a little different if students in the US who didn't excel in school were permanently doomed to a life of poverty...I think the parents might care a little more.

My experience, having worked with security "consultants" in the past, is that many of them are of the same stripe as the management consultants from Accenture, KPMG, etc. and just fly around the country giving PowerPoint presentations to scared executives trying to sell them a packaged appliance/solution. If these guys are part of the survey, I can easily see $200K+ -- their firm is billing them out at at least twice that. I know lots of young grads with zero or little experience routinely get jobs with the big consulting firms if they went to the right school, and are immediately put into service at large companies in positions of relatively high authority for their actual skill level. As long as they don't mind traveling 50 weeks a year, it can be a very lucrative first job for an Ivy League grad. I doubt their business model is any different with IT security.

People actually working on real day to day security see a lot less than that in most organizations, simply because most places don't care about security. If you're a retailer, your insurance company just pays out when you get hacked as long as you checked the PCI DSS auditing box. (That's another stripe of "security experts" who pull in the higher levels of salary.)

I'm not sure what it's like in places that actually need real security (intelligence, banking, etc.)

(Disclaimer: I'm the guy with 6 browser tabs open right now who _should_ be finishing something.)

I think that in the workplace, simple demand on knowledge workers' time is the reason for loss of focus. Fewer and fewer people are being hired to do things, and at the same time more things are being asked of the remaining individuals. I often find it hard to sit and actually solve a problem completely unless people leave me alone and let me work on the one or two hard problems. The thing that does keep me motivated is this -- now that I have children, I can't just spend forever getting things done at work. Once time is up, I need to head out and take care of family stuff. 10 years ago, I could stay an extra hour or two if I got stuck on something. Now, it's tough to even pull out the laptop after they go to bed, so I'm very motivated to do work at work. This keeps me out of most of the time-sinks -- Slashdot is not one of them though. :-) If I were 20-something, had no kids and nothing going on outside of work, I'd probably just work the 12-hour days that Google or other companies like it enable for their workers by providing free food, etc.

As far as society in general, anecdotal evidence seems to point to smart phones and social media as big distractions. I'm kind of in between on this -- I like my phone, but I also have the patience to, say, sit and wait for the train without constantly messing with it. A lot of people can't do that or don't want to. I've seen more than a couple of people bump into light poles on train station platforms because their noses were stuck in their phones. I still have enough patience to use most of my downtime to think about solutions to work problems, or just stare into space and think. But if I was a Facebook-addicted kid or Millennial, that might be harder to do.

I'm 40 this year, and therefore washed up, useless and unemployable. :-) Not really -- but I do have to choose my opportunities carefully.

I've posted about this before, but software development and IT have the same skillset regardless of age:
- Attention to detail
- Intelligent troubleshooting skills
- Creative problem solving skills

The things that differentiate the older people are:
- Experience with technology cycles, and the ability to see what is a fad, what's a rehash and what will stick around
- Experience with doing things -- leading to less rework because we've already tried a lot of the ways that don't work
- Most of us know how to play the working game now and aren't willing to kill ourselves for deadlines/projects that don't go anywhere
- Most of us have responsibilities outside of work (kids, family, etc.) that a younger worker doesn't

In my personal case, my employers get a solid, committed employee who does great work and is able to go home on time. Younger employees tend to like startup culture or employers like Google because they continue the dorm atmosphere from college. Google provides free meals and other services to employees for the sole reason that many don't have a family or other out-of-work commitments yet. My employer doesn't provide free meals - I work for a professional services company. They pay me pretty well, keep feeding me interesting work, and I generally have a healthy balance of work and life. I haven't had to work any outside-of-hours time that hasn't been comped in some form -- after-hours conference call == late arrival/early leaving next day, for example. They do reserve the right to send me to a customer location on short notice in case of a real disaster -- but that's happened once in the 10 years I've worked here.

I guess my question is this -- would older workers even be happy working at EA or Google or similar? Not to say they should be denied the opportunity, but most 40-somethings and above have families or at least something going on outside of work to occupy their time. I think the best strategy for "old" people is to try getting hired onto a consulting firm (where your experience is an asset they can bill out) or something like local/state government work with a guaranteed retirement and benefits.

I think that most people understand there are a certain percentage of truly bad cops who will tamper with evidence, lie, etc. to get what they need. The thing that's new is the Internet, social media, and the ability for guys like these to collect and publish records. If a bystander hadn't taken (or published) the video of that guy in South Carolina being shot, the cop would still be working today and no one would have said a thing. It used to be extremely rare that something like this surfaced, and it often took a major news organization to do the kind of investigating and analysis.

You can't go into law enforcement without having at least some tendencies towards being a bully. I think that, plus the unlimited authority police get, plus the fact that they deal almost exclusively with "bad" people produce the police that make the headlines. I don't know how most are able to keep their bully tendencies in check when they never work with good people, plus racism and fellow officers reinforcing bad behavior probably have an effect over time as well. The end product of that is the stereotypical "bully with a badge" that gets the most media attention.

In the age when anyone can post video of bad police behavior, the only answer is to have tamper proof cameras on police every time they interact with the public. It's too easy for people to make false claims, and it used to be too easy for the police to sweep things under the rug.

Education is a fundamental public good and no public resources should ever go to a private company to run schools. By doing that, you take away resources from the public schools and further damage them.

I know everyone loves to point to charter schools and what a wonderful job they're doing, but there are two things people conveniently ignore:
- Behind that charter school is a company/person getting insanely rich off of public funds and/or using their unique position to maximize profit.
- All the other schools in the area get hurt because resources get funneled away from them.
- You're basically corporatizing education -- I'm guessing Zuckerberg and Company will be influencing the curriculum to turn out a new generation of web code monkeys.

Everyone loves to bash teachers and teachers' unions, but that's not what we should be doing. Teaching needs to be a profession people want to go into, and people need to respect educators. Giving up and just selling the school system to the lowest bidder won't fix the long-standing problems a school district has. Nothing will -- there are always going to be poor kids with horrible home lives. Unless you go after that, education won't improve significantly in bad neighborhoods.

How is this possible anymore? Even the simplest front-line customer service jobs require some sort of computer use now. I haven't seen personal assistants below the senior VP level at any company for at least 15 years now. Only the CxOs get assistants now, and they're basically just managing their travel and personal schedules.

I could (and have) seen people who retired somewhere in the early 90s and haven't touched a computer -- they're why our local library still runs workshops on basic computer use. But even if the sample is the oldest of the old workers, where or in what industry has anyone seen anybody who has never used a computer before come into the workforce lately?

Granted, I have seen many people who absolutely can't do anything beyond what they're trained to do, but even those are very rare now. It's been a while since most people have absolutely required training on a new version of Windows or Office.

I am just about to hit that milestone 40th birthday this year. If things are as bad as they seem, I'm probably in for a rough couple of decades.

One thing that does bother me is that "digital natives" are no more or less capable of doing a good job in a technology job than older people. The skills are the same -- creative problem solving, troubleshooting, logical thinking and awesome communications skills. Older people do have different qualities in my opinion:
- We've been around the block and seen technology fads appear, disappear and come back later on with better underpinnings. We've also seen how stuff like virtualization and application containers aren't actually new concepts...just way better now than they were.
- Many/most of us have obligations outside of work and greater responsibilities. A 40 year old with two little kids [raises hand] has a little less flexibility than a recent grad who will move anywhere in the country in a week, doesn't mind sharing a 2-bedroom apartment with roommates and will willingly work 14-hour days for no extra pay.
- Many/most of us have also figured out the game of working for a company, and prefer a healthier work/life balance to throwing all your energy into projects that can sometimes get trashed for no reason.
- One advantage we do have is growing up with computers in a much more primitive state, where more about the actual machine was exposed to you. "Digital natives" grow up with packaged platforms and a lot of the underpinnings are permanently abstracted away unless you are sufficiently motivated to dig further.

For these reasons, among others, companies prefer younger workers because they're easier to control. I'm not saying that all of us oldsters are perfect -- I've worked with a lot of burnt out folks who do the bare minimum to keep their job. But, in my opinion it's not fair to paint everyone with the same brush. I won't kill myself for deadlines the way a 22-year-old working for EA might, but I have cranked out consistent good work over my career, and really want to continue doing so until I don't feel I can contribute anymore.

That's the best thing ever. I can't tell some of those sites apart from some of the Web 3.0 hipster places' actual sites.

It does bother me a little though, and I feel old, but I do remember when technology was actually exciting and there was always something totally new coming out. Obviously, the Web was awesome, but lately the focus has primarily been on only a few things:
- Miniaturizing a computer complete with peripherals and a tracking device to fit in every idiot's pocket
- Cheap, large scale x86 virtualization to bring us -- bum bum buuuummm.... the cloud which is powering a lot of these dumb startups and letting them keep burning through VC money longer
- Rehashing of Dotcom Bubble 1.0, this time with the cloud and smartphones, to produce an endless round of me-too startups. "Tinder for X" or "Airbnb for Y"
- Shoving more ads in front of people's faces and tracking their movements/activities -- similar to Dotcom Bubble 1.0's "eyeballs" measure of profitability
- Automation of key white collar jobs and the rise of the "sharing economy"...so when the next big thing comes along, no one will be able to afford to buy it

I wonder what actual innovation is going to happen next. Watching high tech peak and decline is pretty depressing. It's not clear to me what will replace computers as the driving force for new breakthroughs -- as in, what will end up in the minds of the public as the next big thing. The 80s was dominated by personal computers, the 90s by the Internet, the 2000s by...phones? Social Media?

Most "cybersecurity experts" probably want nothing to do with the military. Look at the average set of comments from any Snowden leak and you'll find that anyone you would want doing this kind of work has a real problem with authority. In the military, authority is what you get. No matter how high up the food chain you are, there's always someone telling you what to do. Combine this with mandatory combat training, mandatory physical fitness testing/standards and tons of bureaucracy, and you have a job that people don't want to do.

This is in addition to the fact that government/military pay scales are incredibly rigid. Government can't compete with the highly paid "elite cybersecurity firm" jobs that involve flying around the country giving PowerPoints to executives and collecting six-figure fees. To join government service or the military, you need to have a sense of service, and the willingness to stick it out until the end to get the actual benefits (a real pension, job security, etc.) Without trying to offend, volunteer military service looks to be a good way out for someone who has very few other opportunities. But with the civilian option, the Army might be able to attract people who can't live with the other restrictions that a military career comes with.

The only thing I can see going wrong is that this will just be an excuse to hire idiots from Accenture, CSC, IBM and the usual suspects. Lots of government contracts end up getting messed up by inserting an expensive consulting firm in the middle.

I would imagine that the NFL is completely self-insured. It's rare today, but there are still organizations where the members don't have a traditional insurance company doing things for them...instead, your medical bills get sent to Mabel in HR and the organization's insurance fund reimburses the provider. Without knowing exactly what goes on, I'll bet something like that happens now with the NFL -- all the teams and players' union pay into a central fund and therefore it's no big deal if someone sees your health record. That would go double for football players who are frequently injured and often in a strange city.

Other than the tinfoil hat crowd, one of the major issues with having universal EHRs is the worry that insurers will discriminate against you as soon as they find you're not as healthy as their average customer. The ACA outlaws some of this, but (a) not everything is off the table, and (b) if the Republicans win the presidency in 2016 the whole law will be flushed down the toilet on Day 1 and we'll go back to the old system. If life and health insurers weren't allowed to see or use this data, people would probably feel differently about it. Health and life insurance are basically making bets against you dying or getting very sick during the policy term.

National-level EHRs would only work with universal health care, where insurance companies wouldn't exist. Only in specialized situations like the NFL is something like this possible now. A sudden illness is unlikely to wipe an NFL player out -- but that same illness will cause bankruptcy in a person whose insurance company dropped them just before they got sick.

Up front, let me say this guy does have a point. Avionics systems were never designed to be secure, since the technology for unauthorized users to access them didn't exist when they were developed. If you're an Airbus designer building the A320's core messaging bus back in the late 80s, do you assume people are going to have wireless network access and phones with the power of laptops in their pockets? Of course, you do now...but not back in the 80s. And once an aircraft system gets certified, changing it is an extremely drawn out process, hence the inertia. If you want another example, look at magstripe credit cards -- another system where, when it was invented, magnetic readers/encoders were "magical devices" that only huge companies could afford, so therefore there was no encryption.

Now, that said, there are way better methods for getting the word out on stuff like this. I'm assuming he already went to the vendors on this, but if he acted anything like what he displayed here, they may have just ignored him as a crackpot. If the guy doesn't have a lot of emotional intelligence, it can significantly impact his credibility in the eyes of the "normal" population. That seems to be a problem with a lot of the security types -- they're obviously very intelligent and spend vast amounts of time digging around in the internals of the systems they're hacking. When it comes time to communicate this knowledge to others, they can do so in ways that might get them lumped into the "nerd living in Mom's basement" camp, deserved or not. Threatening to demonstrate your latest find in a live environment would certainly not be my first choice. Imagine if he had turned on the passenger oxygen warning -- air crews don't go back and check whether a warning like that is legit or not. Pilots follow checklists, and I would imagine the first thing they do is descend very quickly to a safe altitude just in case the cabin actually did depressurize!!

I work for a specialty IT services firm. The company is European, I'm an American. Even though we do a lot of the same services that Tata, CSC, Wipro and the others do, the company is single-industry focused and therefore most of our employees have some clue what they're doing. The discrimination claim is going to be nearly impossible to prove unless there's a real smoking gun hanging out there

The problem with IT services is that when a company outsources their IT, a new layer of abstraction is created between them and their systems. That layer also needs to make money. I know there are MBA accounting tricks that make this arrangement look better on paper, but the reality is that the outsourcing costs more in real dollars and time lost than the company could save by doing it in house. These IT services firms want the maximum profit from the arrangement, so they bill like crazy, and are constantly testing ways to provide the absolute lowest level of service they can get away with. In the case of, say, IBM or Accenture, this is done by swapping the labor out to whatever country is cheapest that year, and only keeping project managers and absolutely key people in high-cost countries. In the case of Tata or Infosys, that's accomplished by a mix of H-1B sponsorships and doing the work in India. The result is very clear, and has been for years -- unless the IT services company is willing to leave some money on the table and someone with a clue at the customer, the customer will get the minimum service level that won't breach the contract, and pay more for bad work product. The problem, like I said, lies in the MBA accounting tricks that make this look like a good idea.

That said, we have the same problem in our company, but not to the same extent as the complaint alleges. All the top leadership is European, it's been that way for quite a while, and the company is very Euro-centric. What we don't have is what this guy is describing -- our engineering group isn't given crap work assignments, etc. But, I highly doubt anyone from the US could move beyond the VP level. That's fine by me, because I have no ambition to do that. What the lawsuit alleges is that there's no opportunity at the lower ranks either.

The thing I worry about for the future is firms like Tata squeezing out the entry-level IT jobs that allow IT professionals the ability to learn and grow into better IT jobs. It's not about the people's national origin -- my job involves working with a worldwide group of employees and customers, and there are great, fair and abysmal examples of IT professionals in all countries, all races, etc. Culture can be a problem, especially in mono-culture firms. The root problem is that if someone can make more money as a...whatever...instead of an entry level IT tech, then there will be no more job/career progression for anyone, and the domestic job market in IT will stagnate.