Blackstrat

Apparently, you missed my opening statement. It depends on the OP's goals. But, by no means is my advice "last century". Many here approach their careers as if FAANG and technology was all there is. It's not. Tuition is unquestionably an issue. Nonetheless, it should be viewed as an investment. And no, Coursa is generally not an adequate substitute for an actual education. It's a way to familiarize oneself with a topic but by no means is it comparable to the typical university treatment. It's fine to believe that "it's different this time or today". It's not. History has shown repeatedly that it repeats. And contrary to what many think and hype, the current "AI" trends are not going to replace the need for human thinking. And if you believe it is, then why go to college at all?

Depends on your goals and much of the advice that you'll receive will revolve around maximizing the college experience. This is certainly important. However, as a hiring manager for several decades, one of the things that routinely frustrated me was a stream of candidates from very good schools that were totally ignorant of basic business practices. Most graduates will not work for FAANG companies upon graduation. They will go into industry. And yes, right now AI/vibe coding is all the rage. The issue becomes what value does one bring to the company. I've seen this play out many times over the decades. So my suggestion is to burn a couple of electives on things like accounting and business management. Learn to write well and speak well in front of any audience. When you interview with an insurance company after graduation, for example, the hiring manager isn't going to be overwhelmed with your ability to write a compiler or even necessarily your vibe coding skills. They will likely be impressed more by your presentation skills, your ability to grasp business concepts, etc. Enjoy college, but don't become so rigidly engaged with technical topics that you limit your future opportunities.

Why is it too many? Books are an experience that no digital medium can’t replicate or even imitate. Plus one owns their books in perpetuity, unlike digital that is merely licensed and ephemeral.

If they are actually interested in the profession, and not just the money, find a smaller company in the area that’s hiring for a less specialized role, one a generalist has a chance of performing, eg a customer support role somewhere that maintains some development efforts. Even this will be difficult if the last ten years or so hasn’t afforded them some basic people and business skills. In other words, regardless of the role, they have to bring something to the job. Assuming they do and can get hired, then it’s about learning that business, technical space, etc. It will be a lot of work regardless. Is FAANG a possibility? Yes, perhaps, but not a probable one. However, there thousands of commercial companies uilding and deploying interesting projects and paying very good salaries.

I'll stand by my comments. There is a perception here that the Trump administration is historically dangerous and we've never seen anything like it. That's not factually defensible. Now in my 70s, I've seen presidents come and go and frankly the vast majority of them have left a lot to be desired. All presidents have engaged in activities that at best could be considered extralegal, particularly when viewed from the "other side". Realistically, Trump has done less damage to the country than Biden for example. Or more correctly Biden's team. The decline of western democracies stems from being unwilling to stand up for the very values that made those countries successful, massive immigration from Mexico and the Middle East, unwillingness to reject radical Islam, calling for the elimination of police, etc (the list is lengthy) are all reflections of a lack of civic courage on the part of elected officials the world over. France, Spain, Great Britain, Germany, as well as the US have all surrendered much of their culture to immigration. And the results aren't favorable to traditional Western countries. So yes, most are in decline. And attempts to halt the decline, as some of Trump's policies are directed, are met with scorn and derision, claims of fascism, etc. Such claims are historically inaccurate.

As expected, communism is alive and well here. I find the lack of historical perspective here to be a serious indictment of the educational system.

Turn off CNN , FoxNews, MSNBC or wherever you’re getting your hyperbolic reaction. You have much more to be concerned with, such as the DSA takeover of the Democratic Party and the alignment with antisemitism than anything Trump dreams up.

No, I'm saying the use of the 14th amendment to justify the majority opinion is disingenuous, as Thomas points out.

Another bad decision that won't stand the test of time. The decision says more about the justices themselves than it does the decision. Voting the "right way" gets positive press attention, invites to the DC social circle, etc. Kavanaugh and Barrett are both attention seeking, weak willed individuals that Roberts plays like puppets. Personally, Trump should not have nominated either of them. And W's nomination and selection of Roberts over Scalia was appalling. Neither a textualist or an originalist could have ruled that way. And using the 14th Amendment as justification is historically disingenuous, as Clarence Thomas pointed out. Birth tourism will thrive.

So pirating is the answer? I don't think so. It's unethical and illegal. Buy the physical media of the books, movies, and music that you consume. Quit screwing the creators. I've seen numerous complaints on HN about one's code being stolen. What's the difference?

Perhaps it could. And perhaps you think erecting tents on the White House grounds for state events, like a third world country, is okay as well. The government funds a ridiculous amount of "science", some of which has no utility. That's not the government's role. These types of projects can be funded by the university or private industry or not at all. Being a "scientist" and wanting to research some idea DOES NOT entitle you to taxpayer funding. Again, as I and others here have noted, the money is in interest, defense, and transfer payments. Personally, I'd like to see reforms on all social programs. If one is capable of working, then they work. Until you live somewhere that has a thriving economy in government money and see the abuse, you have no idea what you're talking about. Should government money be used to buy booze? Potato chips? I assure you that it happens everyday. I've seen it first hand. So fix the social programs and then we'll talk about funding fringe science research. And let's quit funding the 120+ foreign biolabs doing DOF research. We've seen that script before.

These counter arguments would be more persuasive if they didn't sound like left wing talking points. No one on this thread nor in the media knows the reality of what happened in Iraq. That most here dislike Trump, I get it. But, to pretend that this administration is somehow behaving differently than others in the past is ahistorical and disingenuous at best.

Down voted, imagine that. Predictable as sunrise. So what should be cut?

The government can't fund everything. Too much of the budget is tied up in transfer and interest payments squeezing out other more viable research. The federal government doesn't have unlimited funds. Something has to give.

Term limits. Congress was never intended as a profession. I wish the Constitution had included term limits from the beginning. Alas, everyone wants to get rid of someone else's senator/representative but are never willing to vote against their own.

This is not inflation. The is a supply and demand issue. There are two factors: increasing energy costs due to the season and the rising costs of AI data centers (a big impact in my area). And secondly, the disruption of the oil supply during the continued Middle East conflict. These two issues have caused an energy price spike. Yes, it will eventually result in wide spread costs. But, as the components in the above report indicate, it is not yet spread widely. We are all sensitive to gas price fluctuations. We'd all be better off if we admitted that alternative fuels, other than nuclear, will never provide the requisite energy required to advance civilization. It's time to quit pretending that it will and start building nuclear power plants. Wind and solar farms are not the answer. And end the Iraq war aggressively. It's been nearly 50 years and it's clear that Iraq will never negotiate honestly. So Trump and his allies need to stop pretending and end it. And the same applies to the Ukraine-Russia conflict - no more US tax dollars to the Ukrainian dictator.

I love the reaction that I see when people are told they are responsible for their own outcomes and it takes work. Getting down voted for such comments is hilarious.

Remember the dot.com bubble? We're living it again.

Generally, income distribution is a solved problem. The issue is that too many people aren't willing to take the steps necessary to get the income they seek. They'd rather scream about the minimum wage, the ultra-rich, the evil white men, etc. Redistribution schemes do not work. Bottom line, stay in school, get a functional education, stay off drugs, moderate alcohol intake, and don't have kids early, particularly when you aren't married. Yes, I'm aware that there are those people for whom such steps are insurmountable. That's where community organization come into play, e.g., churches, NGOs. It isn't the government's role to ensure equal outcomes. That's called communism. And it fails everywhere it's tried.

Under no conditions should the government own AI companies. The government has its hands in too many companies already. What needs to happen is stricter enforcement of copyright laws and intellectual property rights. In other words, AI training data should be curtailed substantially until such time as the companies are willing to pay for it. It's no different than the various other internet piracy issues, e.g., movies and music. Just more hype at the moment. That too will pass.

Unquestionably, many people today rely on LLMs more than actually reading. Before that, many depended on the IDE and the web to teach them the language. (What taught them the paradigm?). I think one of the issues though goes back to the bookstores themselves. For years, the quality of the STEM books that were actually available in the store declined precipitously. Perhaps it was the Amazon effect. Barnes and Noble and most independent shops didn't understand the market for the professional software developer. Browsing the shelves for "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" or "Clean Code" and instead finding shelves of Dummies books and IPhone for Seniors, etc. drove buyers to the web and Amazon. Even now, B&N Online can't match Amazon for selection. Since demise of the Borders chain, bookstores have been unwilling to absorb the carrying costs for deeper books that sell less frequently. The feedback loop kicked in and now the shelves are bare. The one thing that still works for me at the local B&N is watching for special orders that were declined by the customer and subsequently shelved. That's how I scored the latest version of the Art of Electronics for 40 something dollars. Those of you who are younger and rely on the web and "AI" will someday realize that your knowledge is less structured, and probably more shallow, than those of us here who are dinosaurs and learned the old way with textbooks and the like.

We aren't talking true software engineers. We're talking about people that think their job is to write code and nothing else. Yes, SWE salaries have gone up a good deal in recent years. However, we heard the same outcries about unions in the late 80s-90s when outsourcing and offshoring began to flourish. As for compensation for voluntary overtime? It had nothing to do with unions and everything to do with visionary management and aggressive, committed team members. The average person in the industry today doesn't have the same drive. I saw that repeatedly the last few years I managed. Their expectations were based on what they had read about FAANG jobs, which didn't reflect the typical commercial situation. So while salaries did rise, they weren't competitive with the Big Tech firms. That's just reality. But those applying to the jobs thought differently. It was common to get college graduates from middle and lower tier schools or junior developers with 1-2 years experience expecting to make $150K+ and get 4 weeks of vacation. That's just not realistic at most companies. And if you were able to reach a mutual agreement, they seldom stayed more than a year or two before trying to leverage up another notch.

No, we weren’t being taken advantage of. We were working a project that changed an industry dramatically. The projects weren’t mismanaged. They were very aggressive to be sure, but that’s sometimes what it takes to be first and change things. We did it voluntarily and were well compensated for the times. As for disposable code slingers? That’s been true for the last 30+ years.

Cool page. I still have a working TI SR-51 from the early 70s, probably 74, maybe 75. Blew several hundred dollars on it, only to learn that the university I attended only allowed slide rules. So it goes. Despite the rather primitive red LED, it still works. Better than my slip stick actually. It's amazing the circuits that fail on a slide rule.

This isn't new however. We've always been subject to these cycles. Expecting a union to mitigate cycles is a fantasy. All it can do is protect the mediocre that are displaced by the AI. We saw the same reaction when companies began to employ more contractors and offshore more work. The mistake is to believe that we are somehow experiencing something new. We're not. If you've ever worked in an environment where the management supported "top-ranking", it's similar, except it occurred once or twice a year. No one is guaranteed a job. What I see here are concerns from people whose primary job seems to be coding, likely most on the web based applications. These were always commodity jobs as Amazon told me a decade ago. The value that tech people bring are understanding the business, the problem, and proposing solutions. As of now, AI cannot do that effectively. Instead of hoping for unions to mitigate the displacement or shorten the work week, a better strategy is to figure out how to be irreplaceable. If you're slinging code for 40+ hours a week, you have ALWAYS been disposable.

And those that believe unions benefit workers, particularly in the tech space, are the same people that think life would be better under a collectivist form of government and that the minimum wage needs to be raised continuously. Unions had their place in early 20th century. Those conditions are in the past. If your "conditions" in a tech job needs improvement, get a new job. Anyone that went into tech expecting it to be like a 7-3 manufacturing job, went into the wrong business. I spent years working 60+ hours a week and loved it. If you don't, change careers.

The one thing about government regulation is that it is slow moving, both in initiation and resolution. In my career, there were the ATT, IBM, and Microsoft antitrust cases, all of which took years. In many cases, the market resolves the issue before the government does. The FTC as well as several states are going after Amazon currently, though it's not getting a lot of media coverage. Amazon will likely take a hit comparable to ATT in the 80s, e.g., the divestiture of the Bell system and Bell Labs. I wouldn't be surprised to see Facebook go out of business. The social media addiction lawsuits are proliferating and they've already lost in New Mexico at the state level. The AI companies are just beginning to draw attention, mostly at the state level. The federal government thus far has been slow and inconsistent. Throw in the use of copyrighted material for AI training data and the likelihood of politicians jumping on the bandwagon is high. Already, entertainment figures, authors, publishing houses, etc. are suing. I doubt companies continue to survive these lawsuits under fair use doctrine. And it's hard to see how Google, Microsoft, and others ultimately win any lawsuits that involve using private data to train AIs (despite their denials), e.g., GMail, GitHub, etc. This doesn't even touch the use of images and voices, which AI companies are routinely using as training data. All of this is chum in the water for politicians, regulators, and lawyers who can't resist grandstanding for media attention, regardless of the facts or outcome. As for the cloud itself? I suspect we'll see more pullback by companies using the cloud in the coming years as cyber attacks, outages, costs, etc begin to pile up, and risk premiums exceed cost savings for select industries, e.g., medical and insurance firms. Already you see a few companies popping up to support a move from the cloud. Will it happen? I have no idea. The bottom line, by all means, push your idea to the limit. Just don't lose sight of the fact that it's less a technical issue and more an environment/trends issue. Best of luck.

Unionizing tech workers will not save tech jobs. It'll only create an additional costs to the employees. We saw similar trends in the 80s when the PC started to displace the mainframe developers/users. The pool of available mainframe jobs shrank somewhat, while the demand for PC developers exploded. Every major technology change creates these displacements. The answer isn't to look for unions to save your job. It's to figure out how to pivot and still be employable. All unionization will do is cost you mosey and stifle innovation. I grew up in a union household as did my wife. Unions aren't the answer to any question in the modern world.

I'm not trying to discourage innovation. Your idea seemed to be based on an infrastructure solution to current technology. Perhaps I misinterpreted. And as a starting point, it may be a good venture. However, I would be looking for the next wave of opportunities to capitalize on. Obviously, Google succeeded Yahoo. Facebook succeeded the various bulletin board systems like Compuserve/AOL/Prodigy (though I still preferred the Usenet days). Amazon set out to be the Walmart of the web. While I doubt any of these companies will go away, they will become less significant over time. The high flyers today will eventually face significant competition or government action/regulation, though Palantir may get an pass. I had the privilege of working on two major industry changing projects, and though they weren't my ideas, they were still a rush. And code I wrote 30+ years ago that is still in operation. That's something many people never get to experience. I wish you luck. Just keep your eyes on the industry as much as the technology and be prepared to pivot. I hope you wind up with mountains of cash.

Another concern is how to weather the AI bubble. Right now, everyone going all in on "AI" reminds me of the 90s when companies like Exodus Communications, Level 3 Communications and others built out heavily only to see it all evaporate. Yes, eventually what these companies were doing became the cloud but none of them are active participants. I would argue that before jumping into reliance on current AI trends that one evaluate where on the Technology Adoption Curve that the industry is. I suspect we're still at the Early Adopter phase and the build out is based on a bit of irrational exuberance. Couple that with the growing backlash against new AI data centers and depending on current trends seems exceedingly risky. Everyone argued in the 90s that "it was different this time" as they are arguing today. It's not. It rarely is. Go back and read the history of the PC starting with Apple and moving into the 80s Compare that to today's market. Same with the emergence of the Internet. Where are companies like Prodigy, Compuserve, or the incubators such as CMGI. Sometimes people have ideas and can ride technology waves and make huge money. But at the end of the day, that's far rarer than "having a good idea".

https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/co/2026/05/11503360/2...