I look at job boards in Finance and see numerous firms advertising for very specialized combinations of skills and experience. For instance expert level C++ coders with several years of ultra-high frequency trading experience. Basically they want to recruit someone who's already doing the exact job they are advertising for. So it's no wonder these jobs go unfilled.

The big teams spend money as quickly as they possibly can. The goal is not to amass revenue but to have no extra money left over at the end of the year (they are non-profits by law). So there is lavish spending everywhere. They house the entire football team at a hotel the night before home games. They send the entire 200 person band to bowl games with hotels & meals. These teams have incredible practice facilities that are like indoor stadiums. The list is endless.

I used to name all of our servers after famous mathematicians / physicists. Pretty nerdy but a big hit with the PhD's who used them. I've also seen movie stars names - FrankSinatra, GingerRogers, etc. And states / cities.

At my firm we rank-order the projects in terms of priorities. That completely simplifies the resource crunch. If we're out of resources, the last unsupported project just waits.

Just make sure to allocate 10 or 20 % time to support or that will wreck your timelines.

As to online degrees, I tend to value that much less than classroom-based schooling when I evaluate candidates. I just don't think it's as rigorous and at least a few online schools are just diploma mills. But in some circumstances (like the OP) I'd take into account the lack of local universities. Actually I'd consider it a plus. It would should initiative and hard work to have somebody complete a degree program like that while working full time. But I'd still likely quiz that person more stringently about the material compared to somebody with an Ivy / well-respected state U degree.

I'm surprised at the lack of support for continuing education that many have mentioned here. My firm (Wall Street) REQUIRES annual education. If you don't do it, you get downgraded on your annual review. Nothing worse than people who let their skills ossify. Both I and my manager follow this HR directive closely. And the firm puts its money where its mouth is - it pays up to 15K per year for classes.

"If the lawyers hadn't run the case, no one would have got anything. "

No one did get anything.

Except for the lawyers.

SAS is a great package but is probably prohibitively expensive. An open source version like R is probably more appropriate.

I live and work in the Financial District, NYC so I can give first hand information on what I've seen. So far the protests have been minor and largely ignored by the population down here. The largest march had maybe 200 people. I've seen another with about 50 - 100. So it's small scale events. The protesters are camped out in a common area with tents, sleeping bags & such. All participants seem to be basically peaceful young hippie types, many students, etc. About as non-threatening as one could imagine. The police have erected barricades everywhere to impede pedestrian traffic. That makes it a hassle to get around both for protesters and residents. Lots more cops than usual are in the area (and this place is normally manned like a fortress). Mostly the cops are just standing around looking bored. That being said I wouldn't be surprised if they are reacting strongly to the protesters. All the NYPD has focused on in the last 10 years is anti-terrorist training. The result is a force ill-equipped to handle peaceful, non-violent protests. So the overreaction to the crowds (such as pepper-spraying women) is not a surprise to me.