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Comment Re:tough to plan your career or retirement (Score 1) 73

It's different than my job at my current company. I don't think I'm going to get fired. And I recently asked for time off after finishing a tough release.
My company has zero layoffs as a KPI that the CEO and board committed to shortly after some very difficult layoffs 15+ years ago.
It flip side means it is difficult to get hiring reqs approved and the interview process is long. And the recruiting department is short staffed, so candidates don't get regular updates on the interview process. A lot of them drop out because they can get interviewed and hired by another company faster than going from phone screen to in-person interview at my company.

Comment Re:Just hire mathematicians (Score 1) 96

Most mathematicians do not study the kinds of mathematics required for basic computer science.

Good first principle and good foundations are more important that domain knowledge.

Of course, maybe computer science should not have started in engineering depts

Some CS departments started in math department. But more common these days, at least in the US, is they are an extension of engineering. Probably because there isn't a huge difference between digital design and hardware description language (HDL) than with the coding that computer science and software engineering does.

I would prefer if CS was more in the vein of Knuth when it comes to approach to theory and Wirth when it comes to application. Unfortunately having great educators as examples wasn't sufficient enough for CS programs to align on effective teaching. Nor have CS programs really aligned on the scope of their own programs. It's not hard for me to pick two Universities that have little overlap in their main CS track after the second year.

Comment Diversify your skillset (Score 1) 73

As a young programmer I watched senior coders get laid off and realized several things:

1) The more you make, the more attractive the target for cost reduction
2) You could have extensive knowledge about coding and a specific codebase, it won't save you.

Since then I spend my free time finding skills that my current environment is lacking, then develop those skills and put them to use. In the intervening 20+ years in the field, I have never once been laid off despite making what I make ( admittedly violating rule #1 ). Even were I laid off, I have several companies that would jump at the chance to have me back ( given my skillset and work ethic ).

I think working for larger corporations stifles people; they let themselves get comfortable in the pigeon hole they've been assigned, so they are ill prepared when lean times come.

Comment Just hire mathematicians (Score 0) 96

If you want to solve difficult problems, simply hire mathematicians. In academics, the Math department has its house in order. But Compsci departments vary so much between different universities that I start interviews of NCG with some really basic questions that anyone in the field should know.

For example, I might start with a linked list, an interrupt handler (ISR), and a semaphore/mutex/threading problem. If you can do 2 out of 3, then that's a good start. If you can't do any one then I recommend to the HM to pull the plug and skip the remaining interviewers.

But if you can already do a bunch of stuff in Matlab that I can't do. And you seem to be interested in C++ (or whatever we're using). Then I have no problem letting you figure out the rest on your own. The CS part of the j ob isn't really hard, not at the practical application level.

Comment Re:It's cheaper (Score 1) 28

Fossil fuels are such a pain to deal with geopolitically as well. Nobody is likely to invade in order to steal my sunlight. You almost need a huge standing army to have any influence on fossil fuel prices.

We all know that but those companies spend a lot of money buying our elections. Mostly with propaganda to trick us into voting for people who are currently crashing our economy and getting ready to lay us all off

Pretty much every organization that accumulates more power than the people will take control. It's almost impossible to peacefully hold onto a democracy for any length of time.

Comment Re:Our society doesn't respect individuals (Score 1) 32

So you run with the guilty until proven innocent?

If your using AI to process data, you deserve to be audited to verify responsibile behavior. Civil liability is not the same as criminality, and a presumption of innocence is not how it works. Nor is executing a regulation statute the same as assuming guilt.

I feel like you really went off the rails with your argument.

Comment Re:The writing is on the wall (Score 1) 31

I've been poking proxmox for the past couple years, using it at home and in smaller environments and such...really impressive. I know there are some sophisticated functions that esxi can do that proxmox can't, but if you aren't one of those edge cases then you should be fine.

I really appreciate it's clustering and HA capabilities that you get out of the box, and you can't beat the cost ( even if you buy support ). It's really a game changer for the smaller to medium environments, particularly those that were on vmware stuff before.

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