redschell

I think there's a great opportunity for bootcamps to help people like me. I'm currently a pre-sales professional, and have been for a few years now. I'm closing in on 28, and while I've been served very well by developing product expertise, my background isn't in CompSci, and I've never actually formally learned to code. If I want to be a good Solutions Architect down the line, and I certainly do, this could be how I bridge the skill gap.

Sure, I could learn most of what I need to know on my own time, but this might be a great way to get it done quickly in a batch and then move on to applying it in a very practical way with my customers.

Wow, I saw his post earlier on the Stellar subreddit and thought he was full of it, but would you look at that. Here's the post: http://www.reddit.com/r/thestellar/comments/2cebkm/selling_1...

Some people have been offering web consulting services in exchange for stellars, but no details yet on how this guy built his wealth.

Is it normal to carve out two whole hours for exercise every morning? Seems excessive. And the email. The email! A whole four hour block at the end of the day? I'm no CEO, so someone else has to tell me if this is standard operating procedure, or if this boss is just inefficient.

Neat. What lead you to decide on Ruby? I feel like Python used to be the most common beginner language, and maybe it still is, but it really seems like Ruby has gained over the past few years. Which is fine, because it's a great language, but I am curious what gives.

I read it twice, but I still didn't catch a motive beyond "it wasn't fun." I'm thinking he couldn't stomach the process of building a company: the day in, day out of keeping a fledgling venture alive.

On the bright side, he may have saved his former company's life by parting ways with it when he did. Early stage ventures past the incubator/accelerator stage don't seem to weather cofounder disputes without taking significant damage.

The American Association of Physicists in Medicine seems to have your back:

http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2012/01/17/phsycists-...

A full-body CT scan results in 12 mSv; a mammogram 0.13 mSv—a hundred times less. The risks from these procedures, according to AAPM, are too low to have been determined reliably, and may be "nonexistent."

Looks like this debate has been going on for a while now.

I don't know. I can't tell if the phenomenon of ageism in tech is under or overrated, but I do think that techies have the advantage of never truly being out of work, so long as they're hacking away at something.

In fact, older LTU workers could learn from the tech strategy of consulting and freelancing when "gaps" in their careers emerge. So long as you have something to show for it, such as a new skill or someone in your network that can raise their hand and say, "Oh yeah, she mentored me through this big project my company is working on" then you can help yourself out a bit.

I want to know how much of this is HR's fault. What the hell are they looking for, and why? Everyone admits this is a problem, but HR goes on as if they're oblivious to it. And then you read about how they're dismissing candidates that don't have an adequate social media presence, and you begin to wonder why on earth these goons run hiring.

Kevin Rose, Digg founder and VC, just made a post about Bitcoin's fall on /r/bitcoin:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rutkt/bitcoin_is_f...

There are similar barriers to the procedure in America, though they are negotiable. The main issue is that people are fickle, and reversing a vasectomy is very difficult, so they need candidates for the procedure to be absolutely certain it's what they want before they go through with it.

You're always welcome. You've got a long road ahead of you, but that's not a bad thing. That means plenty of opportunities. Work hard, take advantage of the awesome opportunities in this thread, and push for others. If you don't ask, you don't get, so don't be shy.

I'd wish you good luck, but you don't need it. It sounds like you've already got a wonderful family. That makes you a pretty lucky guy when you think about it.

Just keep your head up, and know that you've got a lot of people rooting for you.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification.

The rule of thumb among venture capitalists is that some 20 percent to 30 percent of companies fail, returning nothing to any investor, including the venture capitalists.

Earlier in the article, it mentions the statistic that I'm familiar with, which is that roughly 75% of venture-backed companies fail.

What gives?

I think it comes back to something we talk about quite a bit here: the advantage of the youthful entrepreneur. It's not that inexperienced 20-somethings and college dropouts are in any way superior to their older, credentialed, experienced peers.

It's just that, when you're taking moonshots, you should expect to miss most of the time. When you're tired of failing, you can go back to school, or start in a new career field. The gaps in your resume are there, but they're forgivable. You were hungry and foolish then, but you're ready to eat and learn now.

As others have noted, those gaps hurt a lot more when they appear later on. It's not fair, but it's just the way it is, unfortunately. Even if you were on your way to 20 years of employment at your stable dream job, layoffs can happen. Shit can happen. Count on it.

The whole "8 kids" thing is off-putting for a lot of people. It's certainly not a great idea, but I feel that, even for people with few or no children, catastrophic failure is still lurking in the shadows, ready to reach out and drag them into the abyss.

The best thing you can do is acknowledge its presence and build your defenses by prudently saving and spending.

Hey, I remember first hearing about them on 4Chan /g/ back in late 2011, when they were maybe $6 a pop. We used to call them "Buttcoins" and laugh at all of the people mining them.

Of course, we look pretty stupid at this particular moment, but who's to say it won't all go to shit next week?

Easy, friend. There will be many more waves to ride.

"The MIT startup has no sales to customers, but possibly a DARPA grant to develop their technology. The team has 9 PhDs and just hired an MBA to start finding customers."

That sounds like an exciting setup to me. Also gives me hope for all the fresh PhDs you hear about lamenting their career options outside of academia. Then again, I suppose these ventures are quite limited, and risky, so you can't expect "MIT Startups" to serve as sanctuaries for Ivory Tower escapees.

Seems to be a case of career osmosis. Uncomfortable with the growing popularity of the tech sector, and noticing a distinct exodus of Wall Street-types (who will arrive late to the tech gold rush), they swoop in to fill the gap.

Hopefully they'll attempt to negotiate for better salaries and more reasonable hours, but, according to all my Wall Street friends, this tends to be an effort in futility.

The best of the best will always put in absurd hours doing the tedious work you describe. They need to show off this way to win distinction. In theory, hacker types could buck the system, but that system in high finance, which awards face time and man hours like few other places, is pretty damn robust.

Management consulting firms and Wall Street banks have employed somewhat strict GPA and SAT/GMAT cutoffs for quite some time, but even they can't resist the allure of brainteasers during the interview process.

Google, on the other hand, appears to have done away with them, and now prefers to evaluate potential hires without giving too much weight to GPA or test scores: http://qz.com/96206/google-admits-those-infamous-brainteaser...

It's always been a gamble. If you achieve even a modicum of success or notoriety, your "drop out" status becomes incredibly valuable. You're a trailblazer, a rebel who blew past convention on her way to glory.

If you fail, you're an arrogant idiot who thought she was too cool for school.

What's fascinating about Holmes is that she's a drop out in the biotech/health care realm. This has long been considered a protected area, one where heavy education is a must, as lives are on the line. Founders are expected to be PhDs or MDs with decades of research and/or clinical experience.

Holmes has a decade of experience, and no degree. This is going to be a lot of fun to watch.

Wow. That board of directors is a sight to behold. Looks more like a panel at the World Economic Forum. How on earth did the founder manage to get such high-profile backers?

I hope someone can correct me here if I'm wrong, but wasn't this the purpose of the Volcker Rule? Wasn't it designed to put a collar on HFT?

The implications of this have always fascinated me. It's hard to go back to being a worker when you've spent time as a boss, but we also know that 75% of venture-backed startups fail.

What happens to the failures? Can they go back to work and fall back in line? Or are we going to have "Professional Founders" or "Business Engineers" down the line that have a decade or two of experience starting and running companies, none of which survived past infancy.

It's hard to imagine in the very positive atmosphere that most young entrepreneurs live in. What are you supposed to do when you want to keep building companies, but they just keep failing? Are you prepared to say "I can't do this very well" and move on? Where will you go?

I personally don't think startups are the tech equivalent of starting a band or going Hollywood, but I can understand why some would employ the analogy.

If anyone wants to see HR done right, you should read about People Operations at Google:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/01/...

I know it's a bit demanding to ask what are usually a bunch of unskilled supporting staffers to become proficient in analytics, but you can't expect to solve a problem without putting in some work.

Buffett is an interesting character. From this article, it would appear that he sees himself as some kind of entrepreneur/investor/manager hybrid than as a pure money manager.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/for-buffett-the-long-...

If you go on to read anything about activist investors, like Carl Icahn, you get the feeling that the only way to beat the market is to tamper with it.

I don't think that the MBA is so important that it could be blamed for so many ills in the world of work, but I do think there are two fatal flaws with the modern MBA: Demography and intent.

1.) Demography: Who is the ideal MBA candidate? From what I've gathered, the historical answer would be: "Someone from outside a business education about to move into a business role." So, of course, your average MBA is going to be someone who studied Biology or Mechanical Engineering as an undergrad, right? Well, they're in there, but they're surrounded by people who studied Business and Economics as undergraduates, often from elite schools! What could a Wharton undergrad possible gain from a Wharton MBA? Social proof? A two-year vacation? It's unsettling, and it leads to the second problem.

2.) Intent: What sort of work is the MBA cut out for? Well, they're masters of administrating businesses, so...management? Nope. Consulting and banking. Like lemmings, they go right off the cliff into these fields. All of them. Even the ones who came in there looking to simply move up the ladder in their chosen field, like biotech or energy, will feel pressured into becoming some sort of banker or consultant. So, the MBA ends up becoming a launching pad for people outside of consulting and banking to get in, and for people on the inside to move up.

I don't know how business schools would go about rectifying these flaws. Even if they were to shut out business types, that second flaw is so deeply ingrained in the b-school ethos that anyone seeking to be a better manager in their original field would likely be derided by his or her peers as an underachiever.

Interestingly enough, I hear the Executive MBA is a far better experience, simply because the students are too far along in their careers to make a pivot into something else. They're just there to get better. And maybe for the two-year vacation thing as well.

It seems like some people actually take pride in their technical ignorance. They boast to coworkers how unfamiliar they are with CRM platforms and lead generators, and they laugh at the notion of using very basic coding skills to script some of their more monotonous job functions. It's disheartening. They must know that, regardless of age, it's adapt or die, but they're so damn stubborn.

Does anyone know of a Coursera for older, working professionals that have begun to fall behind in their skill development? I know that Coursera and other learning platforms are not necessarily designed for young people, but I'm sure the academic design/nature of it turns a lot of professionals off.

Might be an interesting startup idea (though I'm sure someone's already on it).

How about a designated "policy" section, up there with "ask" and "jobs"?

It might be nice place to discuss the legal ecosystem for startups, too.

The blog's author, later in the comments section, doing a great impersonation of my mother (sans the anti-immigrant bit):

All of the smartest Americans are going into more lucrative fields like finance, medicine, and law. As much as you think the creme-of-the-crop engineers are getting paid, they aren’t making as much as investment bankers, and even the best computer programmers don’t make as much money as an average surgeon.

The market is flooded with mediocre Indians willing to work cheap, and that’s what every IT department wants, cheap labor.

It amazes me that people can still say things like this in post-crisis America. As if finance, which is still reeling, isn't already flooded with Indians and Asians with tech backgrounds, as if they aren't in law (horrifying debt, anemic job market) and medicine (even more horrifying debt, massive commitment) as well.

Hell, I wonder if the quote here, supposedly from the WSJ comments section, is even real, or if he's just looking to rile people up.

Ageism in engineering, especially software engineering, is a real issue worthy of vigorous debate, but I'd like to think there are better pieces we can argue around than this dubious anecdote.

For anyone interested, a link to photos of Harry Eastlack's skeleton:

http://raregeneticdisorder.blogspot.com/2012/09/fop-skeleton...

Wonderful article, as expected from Carl Zimmer, who does such a great job of exploring biological mysteries like this.

There are four or five poems I read almost every day as a sort of cathartic ritual

Wonderful! I'd love to hear about them. I also have a few go-to poems for those days I feel unbalanced. The two I've probably digested the most would be "If--" by Rudyard Kipling, and "Desiderata" by Max Ehrmann. They're not exactly hidden gems, and I've even seen them floated around HN from time to time, but man do they work.

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~gongsu/desiderata_textonly.html

http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm