Sorry, I disagree. Knowledge of math and technology doesn't mean you can program effectively. In my experience, there are a lot of smart EEs and physics majors who are able to get jobs in CS but don't have the fundamentals down and aren't able to be efficient, effective coders. That doesn't mean they can't learn it, of course they can. Just like most CS BS would probably have been able to make it as an EE or BS physics. Then of course there is the the engineering part, the knowledge about the craft of programming and how to work on teams, learning how to take over a large existing codebase - so much of being a professional programmer is working on other people's code, and you don't get much exposure to that in college typically. It's possible this was done for some reason related to getting more moar h1b visas, but there's plenty of push behind that already. I have worked with a bunch of irritated EE programmers (I'm from the lower applied science, i.e., CS :-)), who are angry and pissed at the world, generally because they spent so much time in all those EE courses doing stuff that's not relevant to their jobs as programmers.

I think that single payer would have been much much better than what we have. But the dems didn't have that much of a majority and all those chicken shit conservative dems were not really on board with it. We lost single payer because one senate vote counted so much - that senator from Nebraska, a conservative dem, who did lose his seat, personally held out his vote to kill single payer, and that vote was needed so out it went.

I don't agree that raising restaurant wages to $15 an hour in Seattle raises prices very much. Remember when Elizabeth Warren discussed how much restaurant prices commonly have to increase with min wage increases - just a few cents, a few percent. I'm willing to pay 1 or 2% more so that someone can have a living wage. There were also some astro-turfy (chamber of commerce type) groups around Seattle looking around for restaurants that were closing because they couldn't afford labor increases. They came up with some examples that were later proven to be bogus.

It's certainly possible that raising the amount you pay employees could wipe out a business that can't afford it, but that turns out to not generally be the case here. The claim that raising minimum wage is wiping out small businesses has become an article of faith on the conservative side, just like global warming.

The other side is you shouldn't have any minimum wage - the problem is that then those workers get various welfare coverage, like Walmart. We shouldn't being subsidizing Walmart's ability to pay people a tiny amount.

I live in Seattle and I've never heard of anyone with such crap internet. The vast majority of people here have comcast, sadly, like me, and it works just fine.

He just lives in some weird neighborhood in Seattle. Like in many cities, there are a few different cable companies; it has nothing to do with liberal seattle. I used to live in a city in arkansas and it had the same stupid mix. Virtually everyone in seattle has access to sucky comcast. I can get comcast or slow dsl. A very few areas have fios but they don't do new rollouts. It's no different than most places in america. There are a few lucky areas that have fios or gig ethernet, but most places don't.

Seattle has actually been working to figure out how to roll out access using their dark fiber to end users, but they are stupid and afraid to commit to spending money on it. In seattle there is one really interesting provider, Condointernet.net (bought by wave g a little while ago). There are many condo & apt buildings in seattle and now other cities that get cheap & fast gig ethernet. It's a wireless technology. http://gowaveg.com/our-buildin...

But you paid Comcast etc way more than you pay Netflix etc. And my netflix bill doesn't go up or down each month and doesn't have mysterious charges on it, unlike cable.

I think the best thing is ignore comments from all people that use terms like social justice warrior or use SJW because they think they are so cute. Get over your racism, sexism, and inability to treat people as individuals.

Thanks for that insight on h1b. I've been a dev for 20 years and that exactly matches my experience. Many good people, good engineers, who were just not us citizens, and then occasionally I'd meet someone not so good. I do read stories about what seem to be lower level jobs in the us replaced by outside firms hiring h1-b's with massive layoffs. That's terrible and wrong. My experience working at Microsoft (left almost 10 years ago) was that we hired all the good devs we could find, and there just were enough americans. We always had 3000+ job openings. The same was true at the next giant company I worked in.

But like the recent example of California Edison replacing IT workers with H1Bs, that's wrong. Explicit replacement should be illegal. And training your replacement when you are laid off should be a fine paid to the work of 5 years salary.

That's a great link, thanks. I always wonder how many EE people end up being devs, since it pays more and there's more demand. I know a lot of EEs who ended up as software engineers, and some of them wished they hadn't ground through all those tough EE classes and instead spent more time working on their programming. I have read in India non-CS fields lose so many engineers to the software world that there is a huge shortage of junior people, they just get sucked up into programming. I have wondered if this would happen in the US, but I haven't see it happening - there are just a lot more engineering, math etc grads here.

No, you should expect your salary to go up when you leave Microsoft! There are even enough jobs here to absorb a big layoff from mr softy. I worked there for more than 10 years, and had no problem finding my next job.

I assume you are in the Seattle area if you are at Microsoft. If you are a dev, you should expect your salary to go up after you leave Microsoft. The big co job train goes between Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook in Seattle, and then there is almost every mid tier company here, plus hundreds (1000s?) of startups. I'd been at 2 of those for almost 20 years, and tried a startup that paid what I'd been making at my previous big company job (although I lost the annual stock grants that were actually worth something, and the startup had no bonus).

Now I'm heading back try a middle tier company, and I'm back in that world of high salary, plus bonus, annual 4 year stock grants. It's so much money I can hardly believe it. My new company focuses on long term hiring, they don't want to burn people out.

My spouse works in education and if you have lots of experience and a master's degree and have national board certification, you can make $90k at the top of the salary scale. We paid interns 65-75k at one of the big companies above, here in Seattle, and I'm sure new college hires make more than $90k. $90k is barely enough to buy a house, but starting teachers make in the $30's, which is barely above poverty wage in the big cities in puget sound.

Another crazy thing is I constantly meet people moving up here because the weather is so great, the traffic so much better than SF and the houses are so cheap :-)

Someone who believes global climate change, almost certainly caused by humans has to give some reasoning why they think it's all a big lie: 1. Getting rich off research grants? This one's almost too stupid to list, but I've read it. 2. Trick people into giving up their freedom or something to reduce climate change? I never understand what this means really. Is it the idea that actions and choices in my own life might have any negative repercussions is unacceptable? 3. It's all a big lie? How come other areas of science are not all big lies, like evolution, geology, cosmology (the universe can't be that old, the bible told me so).

230V/30A is not enough. The Tesla Model S already takes 80 amps with dual chargers for fastest charging. Run 100 amp wiring, even if its not hooked up yet to your panel. In the future people will have ever more power hungry electric cars.

If your job has gotten boring, where only 1% is interesting, try to do something different. I was bored at my job at "big company" and was fortunate enough to move on to a startup, where I'm making the same salary, but learning all kinds of new things. I'd say I'm 50+ percent doing new things. And there's the chance of lots of money through equity. Meanwhile, I'm having fun. And I'm feaking old, starting my 3rd decade of work as a software engineer, so there's hope for you folks whining about how boring and terrible your job is.

Oh come on, you can't generalize about managers who happen to be women. You only have a very few data points. All these comments are unfair and sexist. Just as if you only had one black person who was your manager then you cannot say "all my white managers were great, but the one black guy was bad". Don't generalize about a group of people. Most people are too aware they can't say things like " of people are bad communicators so they can't be good at a job". Let people be individuals, and don't try to limit them based on your previous experiences.