Agreed.
My daughter got a school-issued iPad last year (junior in high school) and in my opinion it only served to distract her from studies at home (due to the constant Twitter/Instagram/whatever checking), and watch Netflix in her room rather than in the family area.

In her opinion, it did nothing to improve her educational outcomes, and only served to provide another distraction to kids in her classes. Most teachers did not integrate it into lessons at all. Many kids would simply play games in class all day. This is in a middle-class, suburban U.S. high school. After reading Amanda Ripley's "The Smartest Kids in the World", I'm even more against them in schools.

With these devices, the schools are adding more burden to the parents to control the kids' access to the devices simply so that they can get their regular homework done.

Unfortunately, it seems the "oooohhh, shiny!" perspective seems to win out with schools rather than encouraging hard work.

I recently finished a Masters in CS online from DePaul University (a decent brick and mortar college in Chicago) and was really happy with it. Learned a lot of theory that filled in the gaps of my self-taught understanding of a lot of things CS, even though I've worked in CS for 20 years (my BS is in Electrical Engineering).

All the classes were recorded versions of in-class sections. Being a working father, it was great for accommodating my schedule.

I initially started the program just to get the piece of paper, but I also found that now that I'm in my 40s, I really enjoy learning. MUCH more than undergrad when I was 20. I would definitely recommend the "online version of brick and mortar" programs at non-profit or state schools. You likely won't get to do research, but I think if you really wanted that, you'd be in a PhD program.

Other schools I looked at that had similar programs were Colorado State, Stanford, USC, U of Illinois, Texas Tech, Penn State, Arizona State, and (I think) UCLA. Ironically, I decided on DePaul because it was close, but it turned out I never had to be on campus at all. I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more online programs at most universities simply because it can increase their revenue with little marginal cost. Maybe not for liberal arts degrees which require discussion and face-to-face interaction. But I think for the sciences, and especially CS, the model works well.

Did anyone go to their website and read up on the company executives? This guy Sage cut his entrepreneurial teeth on his company that produced anti-aging products.

I can't say anything about the other person, but Ms. Warrior would be a disastrous pick, IMHO. I had some contact with her when she was CTO at Motorola and I came away from that experience thinking she was:

1. Was a poor leader
2. Did not consider opinions other than her own on making decisions.
3. Was really not very knowledgeable
4. Was only out for her own advancement


Perhaps these are the attributes of many successful executives, but don't strike me as qualities you want in a civil servant.

Did you ever have contact with a person of real power/wealth/influence and come away thinking "How did they EVER get to where they are?" The older I get, the more I think success requires some work + many connections + a lot of luck.

It looks like the last might strike Ms. Warrior here again pretty soon.

I did 9/80 for awhile a few years ago when my employer offered it. At the time, my kids were younger and I ended up only seeing them an hour or less every work day. Even though I made up the clock time on the off Friday, I still felt I was missing too much of their lives by rarely seeing them for 9 days out of 14.

Probably be different now that they're older and awake so much more of the day, but haven't tried it again.

For heaven's sake, try to be humble. For some reason, this industry just breeds arrogance. You'll run into many colleagues that think they are experts at everything.

Few are, and the real experts are usually the humble ones you don't know about until you actually work with them.

Find those people. Emulate them, befriend them.