The most surprising part about this to me is that this matters at the top. Sure, for a middle manager it makes sense that it matters quite a bit. I'm pretty surprised that it matters much at the top, though.
If Elon Musk decided to head a major grocery chain I wouldn't stop to consider whether his lack of experience in retail groceries mattered much. But maybe it does?
Really interesting to see the analogy extend to sports, too. Professional sports teams, even successful ones, are almost universally run (coaches, GMs, etc.) by people who didn't play at a high level. Without actually pulling the numbers up, I'd estimate with high probability that the number of "all-stars" either managing or running teams is countable on one hand.
I mean, hell, this year's superbowl is being lead by two coaches who played D3 football, and one GM who played football for a Canadian university. One of said coaches is pretty universally considered one of the greatest coaches of all time.
For the most part these coaches/GMs absolutely could not do the job of the players on the field, nor could they ever.
But those lower level players still have strong knowledge of how to play, and probably tried just as hard as some top level players. They're not going to suddenly announce that they put some numbers in a spreadsheet and figured out that a 5 second 60 yard dash would guarantee victory, so it's time to start training for it.
In technical fields it's not uncommon for managers to ask people to do things that are literally impossible.
In a large company, the VPE isn't managing engineers. S/he is managing managers. If the VPE is capable of people management, project planning, etc. (the line manager's actual responsibilities) in addition to the VPE responsibilities (strategy, hiring pipeline, and the like), then the line managers will be happy. If the line manager is capable of building software, the engineers will be happy.
The VPE doesn't have to be a software engineer, just a decent people manager with enough tech background to not be completely lost when the line manager informs them that we need to make room for a couple extra weeks of maintenance in the schedule next year because our vendor is changing their API format and we'll need to rebuild the integration. (The line manager is the one who needs to understand what the engineer means when s/he says that the vendor is discontinuing their SOAP API in favor of a RESTful JSON API.)
Domain knowledge (groceries, space flight, whatever) is important to a degree for an exec involved in strategy decisions. But they need domain knowledge related to the current shape of the market and the pros and cons of currently available solutions - not the technical details of how those solutions work.
I don't understand what your point is, coaches are precisely an example of a boss having deep understanding of the work being done, as opposed to being hired purely for his people-management skills. You don't poach the manager of a retail chain to be your basketball coach.
Obviously a coach can't replace a player on the field, that's primarily because playing is more important and pays better than coaching at the top level, so no sports star wants to be "promoted" to a coach, they will coach once they can no longer play. And even then, being a coach is not necessarily the life goal for super-rich star athletes. It's a downgrade from what they used to be in their prime.
But if you listen to his interviews, it's clear the guy has a nuanced, clear understanding of the technology and business model behind both Tesla and SpaceX. He may not be able to do every job, but he can do the job of his direct reports.
In contrast, there's the "professional manager" archetype, who Musk is definitely not.
Elon musk already proved his rigor and discipline with coding the zip2 product. It is in no way match to the rigour in management. So he gets lot of respect with other tech guys. Where as it's hard to take order from a manager who has never build anything.
There’s no reason to be confrontational here; I’m wondering why we refer to some people by their first name rather than they last name. The most obvious reason is when there’s already a famous <last_name> (e.g. "Hillary" vs. "Clinton"), or if you know that person personnally. Wikipedia refers to both Marissa M_a_yer and Larry Page (and everybody) with their last name. Do you have some examples of e.g. press articles where Brin or Page are referred to by their first name?
Not sure I totally find this persuasive: The author tries his damnedest to draw a distinction between "unpredictability" and "secrecy", but it ends up being pretty murky.
For example:
> Keeping secrets can protect competitive advantage. Imagine the D-Day invasion of Normandy if the Allies had announced dates and locations.
> But secrecy is not the same thing as unpredictability... Unpredictability bluffs, postures, and palters to gain advantage through uncertainty and misdirection.
Wasn't a big part of the D-day strategy to feed misinformation to the Germans? Weren't the beaches at Normandy significantly depleted on the German side because the Germans thought the allied invasion was happening somewhere else (Italy? I don't recall offhand).
His other points are similarly iffy:
> The leader — the strategist... They propose a race rather than a duel.
Isn't proposing a different contest a fairly unpredictable move? Secrecy and unpredictability seem more-or-less synonymous when viewed through the lens of your competitor.
It seems like by "unpredictable" he means "making moves that seem to provide no net benefit," not actually "unpredictable."
It depends in some cases you can't be unpredictable to your competition without being unpredictable to everyone else. In other cases you can. Strategy is about knowing when you can and can't be unpredictable. It's fine to be unpredictable to make your competition think that you want a company when you don't, so they waste a bunch more money than they should in acquiring it. Not so with your next product.
I don't disagree with you, but that isn't really what the article is saying. The article is all but making a blanket statement that "unpredictability = bad in any context":
> Behaving unpredictably with one group — customers, employees, competitors, suppliers, etc. — means exposing your unpredictability to all.
It is still an adjective in this context. English becomes more and more copula-dropping – i.e. leaving out the verb "to be" when it can be implied by context. If you add it back you can see how it's an adjective:
The opposite of (being) unpredictable is (to be) strategic.
Defibrillators are used in cases of ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia. These are lethal heart rhythms where the heart is either quivering uselessly, or beating too fast to allow the heart to fill with blood between beats. In both of those cases, the patient will have no pulse. A defibrillator will never shock someone who has a pulse (weak or otherwise).
Asystole is when there is no electrical activity in the heart. You are correct that that asystole cannot be shocked, but it definitely won't result in a 'weak' heartbeat (nor should you do CPR on someone with a weak pulse).
> nor should you do CPR on someone with a weak pulse
Absolutely untrue. CPR is recommended by the AHA for anyone who isn't breathing, regardless of whether they have a pulse [0].
By "she may have had a weak pulse", I mean that she may have had a weak pulse that wasn't felt. That's not asystole technically, but it results in the same treatment.
Emergency situations are, understandably, high-adrenaline scenarios and mistakes get made. Even professionals aren't great at detecting carotid pulses properly all the time [1].
> In both of those cases, the patient will have no pulse
Absolutely untrue as well. Only VF is pulseless. VT can present both ways [2].
Neither statement is untrue... You're absolutely correct that the AHA doesn't recommend a pulse check for lay people. But if you know they have a weak pulse, then clearly you did a pulse check, and CPR would not be indicated.
VT with a pulse is not defibrillated, it is cardioverted. If someone is being defibrillated, they are either in VFib or pulseless VTach. In either case, no pulse. Do not ever, ever, ever defibrillate someone with a pulse.
I hate to get into an internet pissing match, but I think this is important (especially so if you're a healthcare professional, because this obviously has ramifications for you). Still, I really have no desire to argue with strangers on the internet, so this is the last I'll say about this:
Both are untrue.
> But if you know they have a weak pulse, then clearly you did a pulse check, and CPR would not be indicated.
Re-read the AHA guidelines I linked to. CPR is indicated for apnea or agonal respiration. Pulse or not.
You are absolutely supposed to do CPR for someone with a pulse if they aren't breathing, because as you probably recall if you're not breathing your pulse is going to disappear shortly anyway.
> VT with a pulse is not defibrillated
Right. You said (emphasis mine):
> Defibrillators are used in cases of ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia. These are lethal heart rhythms where the heart is either quivering uselessly, or beating too fast to allow the heart to fill with blood between beats. In both of those cases, the patient will have no pulse.
Which is untrue, as you noted: VT isn't always treated by defibrillation. And, as I noted, VT doesn't always present with no pulse. The distinction is important, because someone reading that paragraph may be confused and think "VT is always treated with defibrillation". Which is absolutely untrue.
If someone is being defibrillated, then they have no pulse. The person using the AED may not know that, but the AED does.
You initially said:
> Since they were performing CPR on her, it's likely she had a very weak or no heartbeat (asystole), which defibrillators are no good with.
You seem to be saying that if a person doesn't have a pulse, they must be in asystole, and don't need a defibrillator, which is dangerously untrue. The only reason you do CPR is to preserve the heart and brain long enough to use a defibrillator. In fact, the only circumstances under which someone should be defibrillated are certain types of pulseless cardiac activity.
Television and film are particularly bad about this. For obvious reasons. It's more exciting to shock someone with paddles than it is to pump them with 1mg of epinephrine.
It's almost certainly multi-faceted, but I don't think it's just "conservatives discovering the internet," or at least anymore than it was 4 years ago.
Two things that I think contribute heavily to the phenomenon you're seeing:
1) We've had 8 years of a democratic president. People were similarly fed up with conservatism at the end of GWB's presidency. If things haven't been going well for you for the past 8 years (and for most Americans, they haven't been going great), it's easy and common to blame the president for those troubles. And by extension, the president's party and theoretical political ideologies.
It's much easier to have strong feelings after such a long time with one political party in charge (theoretically).
2) I'd wager a large sum that most of those comments come from white males who earn at or less than the median income, who previously may not have felt that strong of a political ideology or at least not enough to comment on an internet forum.
Much of the current liberal discourse in America is focused around historically oppressed groups, e.g. black Americans, or people who don't fit into classic gender identities. This comes at the expense of ignoring (or in some extreme instances, trivializing) the struggles of the working class or middle class who may not necessarily fall into one of those historically oppressed groups.
I think it's easy to imagine that if you're a white, poor male you might not feel like American liberalism in its current state really cares about you or your problems. Not that I think Republicans really care about their problems either, but at least they pay them lip service.
Really interesting that so many people went straight for the "welfare queen" of this current economic specter (s/"welfare queen"/"art therapist") while ignoring this.
I mean the article all but says this ("critics.. say the income-based repayment program... instead bestows big benefits on those who... earn high incomes").
Yep. Income based programs are almost exclusively for those with more than 40-50k in debt, and are most beneficial/costly for the government for people with far more than that. The average college student graduating with less than $20k in debt should not even bother enrolling - they won't see a dime.
I think you're doing a great job. Moderating threads and submissions that are basically guaranteed to be shitshows (like this one) is an incredibly thankless job.
Thanks for keeping it together, and thanks for keeping this from going off the rails.
Really interesting given that white supremacists also tend to be anti-semitic, and most of the same tropes about Asians also apply to the Jewish community: Focus on education, low rates of crime, etc.
Maybe that's just a factor of how modern white supremacy came to be, though (i.e. Nazis).
> I did not receive much support either from the HN crowd
I think there's a reason for that, and you touched on some of them. There's undoubtedly an ageism to the tech industry, and being an older junior developer is likely to be a huge uphill climb.
There's also skepticism around the coding bootcamp industry for the same reason that there's skepticism around University of Phoenix: The certification isn't really useful or impressive, and the kind of person who benefits highly from a program like that would likely learn just as much through self-study at a severely reduced cost (or free).
Compounding that, there's a glut right now of alternative software development education. It's hard to imagine a future where being a software developer isn't significantly less prestigious in the future, except for software development in highly specialized areas (e.g. machine learning).
Not that prestige is so important, but the reasons for the loss of that prestige will likely cause salaries to plummet significantly. It's entirely possible (and some would say likely) that most web development will become analogous to traditional trade professions like plumbers in the future, with:
* Significantly less initial investment: There's no standard or certification for being a web developer)
* Significantly larger pool of competition: Your web developer doesn't need to physically be located near you, unlike your plumber.
If you're fine with all of these things, then that's great! Be a software developer. Just be aware that it's likely to experience significant changes in the coming decades, not many of which are likely to be beneficial. You might very well do better for yourself and your family to actually just become a plumber instead.
I don't know if it makes sense for the OP, but I'll stick up for coding bootcamps as a general concept. I don't agree that most people can just self-study in the same time period and get as effective an education, and I do think that the credential is important.
A friend of mine just did a bootcamp -- from a stalled career as a lab technician in which she was making something around $60k/year (in the Bay Area) -- and sure enough, three months later she got a job at $110k coding the consumer website for a bank.
Now. Is that the quintessential job that everyone on HN longs for? CLEARLY NOT. But is it pretty impressive to jump your salary up two really solid tiers in three months and at least be in a place where you might see another $50k/year over the next 5-10 years? From where she was? Hell yes.
Some people who are amazing autodidacts don't need a bootcamp for the skills, and lots of people who aren't amazing autodidacts could get the skills in other ways (but slower, and almost certainly cheaper). The credentialism is going to be a problem, though -- Google isn't going to hire a bootcamp grad, but they also almost certainly won't hire an autodidact. A big boring enterprisey place apparently will hire a bootcamp grad, and almost certainly wouldn't hire an autodidact. Startups, well, who knows, but they're a crap-shoot.
> I'll stick up for coding bootcamps as a general concept
Sure, and similarly there isn't anything inherently wrong with for-profit universities: You can certainly find people who excelled in an environment like DeVry and don't regret their decision to attend.
Over time one can expect that the "cream will rise to the top" and good bootcamps will have a certain reputation associated with them. Similar to for-profit universities. Still, I hope it goes without saying that many of the same concerns about for-profit universities also apply to coding bootcamps.
> I do think that the credential is important.
Why? What does the credential prove in this case?
> sure enough, three months later she got a job at $110k coding the consumer website for a bank.
That's great! I'm happy for her. Still, I hope that sentence gives you (and her) some pause for concern.
If three months is enough time to train someone for a $110k job, I would suggest that job is unlikely to remain paying $110k in the foreseeable future. It's hard to think of other professions that pay so well for so little investment. The supply can (and will) increase precipitously to match the demand, and salaries will drop precipitously.
For a recent example, see the recent glut of law students and freshly-minted lawyers making a pittance. There are quite a few parallels between that scenario and the current one facing software developers, except that law school is even more of an investment than coding bootcamps.
> at least be in a place where you might see another $50k/year over the next 5-10 years
That's my point though: I don't think that's likely. Maybe over 5, but it seems unlikely that 10 years from now she'll be making $160k. I'm suggesting that those kinds of salaries will be reserved for people working in specialized fields, not people doing basic web development.
For a more realistic future salary, I'd say look at developer salaries in places like Canada, or much of western Europe (where $60k/year a year is probably much more realistic than $110k).
> Google isn't going to hire a bootcamp grad, but they also almost certainly won't hire an autodidact
Google absolutely hires autodidacts. I know a few of them. Clichés about "non-Stanford students need not apply" aside, Google just hires smart people. Smart people don't always have degrees or certificates.
I think that there are a number of relatively more rosy scenarios for current bootcamp grads' salary outlooks:
* Maybe pent up demand will keep salaries high for quite a few years.
* Maybe salaries will fall off the cliff for people who graduate a bootcamp in a few years (3-5), but by that time current or near-future grads will have gotten far enough away from the glut of very junior people to have some salary stability.
* Or maybe the wages of all software devs (or a large majority of them) will fall off a cliff and that will lower cost of living in the Bay Area and it won't be such a big deal all told.
As to Google: It's a big company, it's hired a lot of people. But I guarantee you that all else being equal, a person who got a traditional university CS education has several big legs up over that person's identical twin who was self-taught or who did a bootcamp, for a junior dev position, without extensive industry experience in any of their cases.
I'm self-taught. I've been interviewing GA bootcamp grads recently and they seem to have learnt very little during the 12 weeks. At most they are comfortable with hard coding css and html. Anything more complex has them stumped.
Really? I find they at least know JavaScript, git and a framework or two. Are you one of those academic interviewers asking questions about stuff people would never use in their jobs?
Quite the opposite. I ask them what they know and then let them loose on a paid project based on what they tell me.
For more senior devs I usually talk about code, design/architecture and get them to talk me through some issues they recently faced and how they dealt with them. All high level stuff. If they can explain technical stuff clearly and concisely I'll skip the coding test and put them straight into probation period. Works well for so far. All creases are easily ironed out in code reviews and are mostly due to style guidelines.
The only bootcamp grads who got a job at Google right after that I know of went to App Academy which is as hard to get into as a great university. Where did the ones that you know of go?
Well, I happen to completely disagree with your vision that software development will be so commoditized in 10 years. Software impact on every career path have just started the way I see it. I'm smart enough to know that I will have to keep learning and not be stuck in 2026 with the JS I learned in 2016.
Yes, the pool of available software developers will grow, but I believe the applications of software development will grow even more. Even if it takes to invent my own application of it and sell it.
I still have the sincere impression that software developers in this early ages feel they are rather special and regret that more "common" people are trying to become one. Like a hipster syndrome of a kind.
If Elon Musk decided to head a major grocery chain I wouldn't stop to consider whether his lack of experience in retail groceries mattered much. But maybe it does?
Really interesting to see the analogy extend to sports, too. Professional sports teams, even successful ones, are almost universally run (coaches, GMs, etc.) by people who didn't play at a high level. Without actually pulling the numbers up, I'd estimate with high probability that the number of "all-stars" either managing or running teams is countable on one hand.
I mean, hell, this year's superbowl is being lead by two coaches who played D3 football, and one GM who played football for a Canadian university. One of said coaches is pretty universally considered one of the greatest coaches of all time.
For the most part these coaches/GMs absolutely could not do the job of the players on the field, nor could they ever.