patrick.net

Rin says

Peter P says

Heuristics can work for a while, but they entail assumptions that are bound to be in flux.

That's the thing, it is in flux and that's what makes for a great career in development and analysis. Engineers should definitely be paid as well as doctors.

I agree. I am all for importing foreign doctors and create a multi-tier healthcare system.

New Renter says

Companies would be willing to recruit people with no skills off the street and provide on the job training; however as we know that's not at all what's actually happening.

I am very curious about that perennial discrepancy. I read comments from executives complaining that they can't find employees with the precise training they are looking for, and that the company is not in the education business. Well, if you are looking for such precise training, then why aren't you in the education business? The stated reasons seem pretextual, for example the fear that people might immediately take their new skills elsewhere can be addressed contractually with non-competes. I tend to suspect the real reason is as Rin described above, i.e. they prefer more vulnerable workers who can be abused because of immigration status or student loan peonage.

My degree was supposed to make me qualified as a programmer, but by the time I left school, all of the software and programming languages I’d learned had been obsolete for years.

If you're just starting to program in college, it's already too late. You will be competing with people who started programming when they were five and have been seriously devoting a thousand hours a year to that craft for over a decade before they even enter college. And they do that because they are generally interested in developing software, not because they have to do something for a living. A hack who just tries to enter software his freshman year of college is a fool.

By the time I was graduate high school I had far surpassed all the college professors and most professional programmers. During college I learned far more on my own than in my classes. During elementary school to college, I taught myself
- Basic, Pascal, C, C++, and Java (.NET wasn't out yet)
- graphics
- multithreading
- network programming (back when 90% of programmers didn't even know how to talk over a network)
- the OSI seven layer network stack
- databases
- the Intel MMX and XMM instructions

And that was all outside of my classes.

Software development is like the Olympics. You have to start when you are young in order to compete.

To find real work, I had to teach myself new technologies and skills outside of class, and it wasn’t easy.

If this doesn't appeal very strongly to you, don't even bother with software development. A good software developer has to learn as much as a good doctor has to learn, except that in software, you have to learn that amount every five years because everything changes in that time. Imagine being in medical school your entire life while also working. That's what software development is.

If you're not prepared to do that, don't bitch and moan when you find out that's what it takes. Software can pay well, but it's not easy. If you want an easy career, look elsewhere.

curious2 says

I read comments from executives complaining that they can't find employees with the precise training they are looking for, and that the company is not in the education business.

Again, it is hard to find semi-decent programmers even if you are not looking for a precise skill set. A scary number of candidates cannot even write simple programs on the whiteboard.

Too many STEM students picked their majors because of salary expectations. I am sorry but most of them are crap.

An passionate English major will do better in life than a tiger-parented engineer.

Dan8267 says

Software development is like the Olympics. You have to start when you are young in order to compete.

Not necessarily young but everything must click. It is like golf. But I know people who went from beginner to scratch in two years.

Why are people so willing to forgo their passion and whore their way to financial slavery?

There ought to be a way to better exploit them.

Dan8267 says

Software development is like the Olympics. You have to start when you are young in order to compete.

I question that assertion, although I agreed with most of your comment prior to that point. If you look at really brilliant programmers from NSA for example, they don't become idiots after 40. To the contrary, their capabilities may continue to grow, but the issue is that their motivations may change. Young people may be obsessed with programming 24/7 and then encumbered by student loans that chain them to the highest paying desk they can find. Older people may have spouses and kids that interfere with their work schedule, and/or enough money in the bank that their cost/benefit and risk profiles change. You don't need to be young to program like Edward Snowden, but you might need to be young to walk into exile like he did. Bill Gates turned from programming to other things, but if he were really motivated to learn the new programming tools, I think he could catch up to the best fairly quickly.

drew_eckhardt says

Hardly. There is absolutely a shortage of competent software engineers.

Peter P says

don't know. Programmers are still in huge demand in the Bay Area.

STEM

Science
Technical
Engineering
Mathamatics

So far all I have heard from you people is of a shortage of exceptional (competent) programmers in the SFBA. Guess what - STEM is a bigger catchall which includes more than than just programmers.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement lists disciplines including:[11] Physics, Actuarial Science, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, Computational Science, Psychology, Biochemistry, Robotics, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Information Science, Civil Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Astrophysics, Astronomy, Optics, Nanotechnology, Nuclear Physics, Mathematical Biology, Operations Research, Neurobiology, Biomechanics, Bioinformatics, Acoustical engineering, Geographic Information Systems, Atmospheric Sciences, Educational/Instructional technology, Software Engineering, and Educational Research.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEM_fields

Is there a similar shortage of non-programming chemists, biologists, biochemists, molecular biologists, aerospace engineers, particle physicists, surface chemists, civil engineers, etc? No? Then there is no STEM shortage, there is just a shortage of exceptional, highly specialized programmers.

Programmers/CS/CE are a narrow subset of STEM yet the media screams STEM SHORTAGE when in reality most of the STEM world has nothing resembling a shortage whatsoever.

Does a severe shortage of SFR housing in say SF translate to a shortage of available apartments in Gary Indiana? Of course not but the media hype of STEM SHORTAGE is akin to screaming US HOUSING SHORTAGE when the shortage is limited ( in this hypothetical case) to *just* SFR in SF.

You guys remind me of a couple of drunken fratboys complaining there aren't any women around when in reality you mean only attractive young women actually willing to go home with you for a no strings attached bangfest without demanding money. In reality you are surrounded by women but just none that fit your incredibly narrow and unrealistic demands for a date.

New Renter says

Then there is no STEM shortage, there is just a shortage of exceptional, highly specialized programmers.

Trust me, companies want exceptional generalists instead.

New Renter says

bangfest without demanding money

That part isn't a problem for me :-)

New Renter says

Then there is no STEM shortage, there is just a shortage of exceptional, highly specialized programmers.

Programmers/CS/CE are a narrow subset of STEM yet the media screams STEM SHORTAGE when in reality most of the STEM world has nothing resembling a shortage whatsoever.

Isn't this the bane of the so-called culture of the principal investigators? The men in power hold all the cards and thus, demands a STEM shortage, to maintain their R&D fiefdoms.

New Renter says

So far all I have heard from you people is of a shortage of exceptional (competent) programmers in the SFBA

BTW, there is a shortage of exceptional prop traders in finance.

And the reason for that is they're already millionaires and thus, demand more of the firm's bonuses than anyone else.

If anything, you want to be that *unicorn*.

Peter P says

New Renter says

Then there is no STEM shortage, there is just a shortage of exceptional, highly specialized programmers.

Trust me, companies want exceptional generalists instead.

Fine, whatever. STEM is still far, far more than just exceptional generalist programmers who are willing to rent a crapshack in the SFBA and spend 2+ hrs in the car each day because their employer isn't willing to let them work from home even though programming is about the ONLY STEM profession one CAN do at home.

Rin says

New Renter says

bangfest without demanding money

That part isn't a problem for me :-)

You're also not the one bitching about a STEM shortage.

Rin says

New Renter says

So far all I have heard from you people is of a shortage of exceptional (competent) programmers in the SFBA

BTW, there is a shortage of exceptional prop traders in finance.

And the reason for that is they're already millionaires and thus, demand more of the firm's bonuses than anyone else.

If anything, you want to be that *unicorn*.

Yeah. That skill is even harder to come by. Worse yet, some promising prop traders are false prophets who end up losing big.

Peter P says

Yeah. That skill is even harder to come by. Worse yet, some promising prop traders are false prophets who end up losing big.

maybe because that profession rewards bullshit more than facts.

Rin says

My degree was supposed to make me qualified as a programmer, but by the time I left school, all of the software and programming languages I’d learned had been obsolete for years.

I'm still coding using COBOL. Lot's of gigs available.

New Renter says

Peter P says

Yeah. That skill is even harder to come by. Worse yet, some promising prop traders are false prophets who end up losing big.

maybe because that profession rewards bullshit more than facts.

No, P&L is very real.

Peter P says

Rin says

New Renter says

So far all I have heard from you people is of a shortage of exceptional (competent) programmers in the SFBA

BTW, there is a shortage of exceptional prop traders in finance.

And the reason for that is they're already millionaires and thus, demand more of the firm's bonuses than anyone else.

If anything, you want to be that *unicorn*.

Yeah. That skill is even harder to come by. Worse yet, some promising prop traders are false prophets who end up losing big.

Fortunately, our firm has got one of them and thus, I'm externally grateful that he's kept our system going, whereas otherwise, we would have burnt out by year 3.

Here's a classic trajectory of one, who's starting out as a full timer ...

Year One, $70K-100K salary, light on the bonus.

Then someone in the back office analyzes this person's work. Then year two,

Year Two, $150K salary, $300K bonus

Now, the partners are convinced ...

Year Three, $250K salary, $500K-$1M bonus
Year Four, $250K salary, $1M plus

And then, you lose count of the decimal places.

New Renter says

Peter P says

Yeah. That skill is even harder to come by. Worse yet, some promising prop traders are false prophets who end up losing big.

maybe because that profession rewards bullshit more than facts.

No, that's my job. I'm the professional BS artist.

Are you guys a mostly quantitative firm?

Rin says

New Renter says

Peter P says

Yeah. That skill is even harder to come by. Worse yet, some promising prop traders are false prophets who end up losing big.

maybe because that profession rewards bullshit more than facts.

No, that's my job. I'm the professional BS artist.

I was about to say something about the sell-side. But I didn't want to hurt your feelings. Oh well. ;-)

Peter P says

No, P&L is very real.

Rin says

New Renter says

Peter P says

Yeah. That skill is even harder to come by. Worse yet, some promising prop traders are false prophets who end up losing big.

maybe because that profession rewards bullshit more than facts.

No, that's my job. I'm the professional BS artist.

My bad, my apologies to you both.

Peter P says

Are you guys a mostly quantitative firm?

Not so much, though that's what we used to get started, but more on the risk than profit side. So while our starting phase was kinda inspired by chemical and control engineers, it was our UK connection who really held the candle in terms of handling the regular daily roundtrips.

The most quantitative HF out there is Renaissance Tech in Long Island. They have a full military division of scientists and engineers, modeling and back testing all the time but they're expense in terms of management fees.

In contrast, we're clearly more discretionary because I kinda figured that our initial success would fizzle out without the top prop traders being able to manage the dealbook, after some time.

curious2 says

Dan8267 says

Software development is like the Olympics. You have to start when you are young in order to compete.

I question that assertion, although I agreed with most of your comment prior to that point. If you look at really brilliant programmers from NSA for example, they don't become idiots after 40.

To clarify, if you start out at 5, you can become an expert by 15. If you start out at 20, you won't be an expert until your 30, and that's only if you have as much free time to devote to the skill as you did when you were 5-15. In reality, people in their 20s are more busy than 5-15 year-olds because of dating, jobs, etc. Yes, you can learn on the job, but you'll get 5 hours a week top compared to as much time as you want to spend when your just learning.

From 5 to 18, you have three months uninterrupted time to study anything you want in the summer. Plus you have fewer responsibilities to take up time. And imagine anyone starting a family in their 20s.

For all practical purposes, if you start at 20, it will really take you until your 35 to acquire the same level of expertise that someone starting at 10 would acquire by the time he's 18. Youth have more time to learn and younger brains learn more quickly.

I'm in my 30s, so I'm aware of how much that sucks, but it's the truth.

Peter P says

Trust me, companies want exceptional generalists instead.

Actually, what companies want are replaceable cogs because such cogs have no bargaining power. That's why companies have always tried to dumb-down software development.

Of course, they have always failed because software development is an inherently skilled task. You don't develop software that's already been developed by someone else because it's cheaper to buy than develop. Therefore, the only software that needs developing is something that solves a problem that hasn't been solved before, and so solving it inherently requires skill, intelligence, and ingenuity. It cannot be done by unskilled labor.

Well, Rodney C. Adkins is full of shit and so is his Forbes article. This is what happens when people listen to dumb-ass executives who've done little, if any, actual engineering. This smuck has at most five years of "engineering" experience from 1981 to 1986. After that, he's been a worthless manager or executive. Yet, he's pretending to know how to get more people into STEM and make it better. What a poser.

Let's go over the most important parts of his article

First, we need to increase the size of the STEM education pipeline by maintaining an enthusiasm for science, technology, engineering and math throughout high school and college.

First off, this is coming from an asshole who's a vice-president of the Fortune 500 company most responsible for outsourcing of STEM and the resulting brain drain. During every economic downturn, IBM has mass layoffs of American and European STEM workers. During every upswing, IBM hired Chinese and Indian slave labor. Doing this allowed IBM to thinly mask the fact that it was deliberately replacing its industrialized workers with cheap slave labor in third world sweatshops. This is exactly why

Our youngest students show an interest in STEM subjects, but the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has concluded that roughly 40% of college students planning to major in engineering and science end up switching to other subjects.

Yeah, young adults in college look at how the people in an industry are currently treated and what the future of the industry looks like. For the past 20 years, American big business has sent the unequivocal message that all STEM work, especially software development, will be done in the third world for third world wages. Quality, reliability, and even development speed is unimportant compared to making sure that almost zero of the wealth generated by STEM workers goes to STEM workers. No, it must all go to the executives and the owner class, even if that means making the pie itself smaller.

And IBM spearheaded this movement. Assholes like Rodney C. Adkins are directly responsible. Now he's trying to fool children into entering an industry that will provide too few jobs and not provide a living wage for the jobs that it does provide. If you want to earn a living in STEM, you have to work for yourself and directly sell your products or services. Working for a company is a death sentence.

If American companies want more American STEM workers, the only way to get this is to spend the next 20 years treating the current STEM workers a hell of a lot better. This means no outsourcing, no H1B visas, and doubling or tripling the wages, or better yet, providing STEM workers the same level of profit sharing as CEOs get.

These companies have spent the past 20 years screwing over STEM workers with outsourcing and the past 30 years screwing over STEM workers with H1B visa imports. There is no quick fix for harming the STEM workforce for decades. It takes 10 years of intense commitment and hard work to become decent at any STEM discipline. Sure, a lot of Gen X software developers got their 10 years in between the ages of 8 and 18, but they are the exception to the rule. In either case, a 10-year commitment is not something anyone will be willing to do for an industry that is actively looking for every opportunity to make its workers unemployed.

The very attitude of these scum-bag executives is wrong. STEM workers are not costs. They are the ONLY wealth-producing assets in the company. Everyone else is, at best, overhead. Any company who's products or services are based on technology, which is just about every company today except farming and the service industry (maid, hotel, restaurant, etc.), is basically selling the wealth produce by STEM workers. They are not only the greatest assets of these companies, they are the only wealth-producing assets. No, not even the sales team is wealth-producing. They are overhead needed to move the wealth generated by STEM. Managers, executives, marketing, etc. are even more so.

Second, we need to improve the composition of the STEM education pipeline to include more women and underrepresented minorities. Although women fill close to half of all jobs in the U.S., they hold less than 25% of STEM-related jobs.

And that's because American women are lazy bigots. Yeah, that's not politically correct, but it's true. No teenage girl or young woman wants to enter a STEM field, especially software, precisely because it takes way the fuck more effort than other fields that pay as well or better. Pharmacists have salaries almost identical to software developers and they don't do shit work. Really, how hard is it to type a prescription number in a form and place a container under an automated pill counter? A five-year-old could do that.

Compare that to debugging a hundred-thousand line mess of legacy code involving SQL, ADO .NET, C#, JavaScript, JQuery, and ASP .NET just to find where the bug is when QA can't reproduce it and you've got nothing but a customer complaint to go off of. Oh shit, some property setter causes a side-effect of a wrong HTTP header being sent from web service X to the web server Y, causing Y to silently swallow an exception and abort doing some task that a gentleman's agreement calls for in web server Z. Yeah, counting those pills was so damn hard before that was automated. Now the pharmacists can concentrate on their other difficult tasks like placing the label sticker on the contain before handing it to the customer.

Oh, and by the way, the whole reason you'll be debugging shit like the above is because the company tried to use cheap ass outsourced or H1B Visa labor to write the system in the first place and they did a god-awful job. Now the company can't expand or offer new business functionality until you pay off all their technical debt. And that means 70+ hours a week, no overtime pay. Hey, if you were being paid by the hour, they'd still expect overtime and for you to submit only 40 hours to the worthless headhunter agency taking 20-80% of the billable rate.

Don't believe me about the 80%? Back in the late 1990s, I've seen billable rates of $120/hr where the contractor (software developer) was getting $25/hr. That's an 80% haircut. Why do you think the headhunters always demand to know your salary history? It lets them gauge how much they can fleece you.

Speaking of rates, if the going rate for software developers was $120/hr like it was back in 1998, I guarantee you that multitudes of people including women and minorities would be majoring in computer science. But with wages and rates that are still below 1998 levels in nominal dollars, why would anyone enter a workforce that is looked down upon as social lepers.

Given that for the past 20 years, STEM in general and software development in particular have been harped as the best careers for the 21st century, shouldn't workers in these fields be respected at least as well as doctors, lawyers, judges, bankers, and executives? Well, that hasn't happen, especially by women. Since the late 1970s women have looked upon STEM majors and STEM professionals with disdain and contempt. This is their problem and is not the fault of men. The male STEM student and professional has done more to welcome and placate women than men in any other field, especially the ones that women want to enter like sports, sales, marketing, management, and executive-level positions. The shortage of women in STEM is entirely and solely explained by the bigotry and laziness of women who look down on STEM and who don't want to do the intense work that STEM requires. The few women who are lazy, bigots and who have even a passing interest in STEM are extremely favored by companies simply because they are so damn rare. Women have a harder time getting invited to orgies than to a STEM team.

Sometimes students just need role models who inspire them to pursue STEM-related careers.

People deciding what career path to take look first and foremost at the current state of people in the career they are evaluating. Students don't need or want role models. Students need to see that there is job security and high income in a career, and that they won't get fucked over with outsourcing, unpaid overtime, lack of profit-sharing, loss of their intellectual property to a company that doesn't give a damn about them, and social stigma. Even the most worthless, beer-guzzling frat boy isn't so stupid as to enter a career with low prospects. Why do you think no one majors in manufacturing or agriculture anymore? It's because there are no living wage jobs in those industries.

So, Rodney C. Adkins, take your head out of your ass and realize the simple truth…
http://www.youtube.com/embed/__X7ybW9Ljg

What James Earl Jones said about baseball applies to any field including every STEM field. If you build it, they will come, but if you tear it down, they will leave. If you create an industry where workers, the wealth producers, get to be productive and keep a fair share of their productivity, that is, get to maintain a high income and standard of living, then people will invest the enormous amount of time, effort, and sacrifice to become damn good in that field. But if you suppress incomes, exploit workers, replace them with economic slave labor in third world shitholes, then people will leave that industry and young adults will rightfully stay away from that industry.

Just remember, there is a 20-year lag between the decisions of companies and the results. It's been 20 years of suppressing STEM worker's bargaining power, and so many have left these industries and few have entered them. That's why today, despite there being many unemployed STEM workers, few are good. The intelligent people who would have entered these fields haven't. And those people who did enter this field had no one to mentor them. The passing of knowledge from one generation to the next has been broken and expertise have been permanently lost. Rebuilding that knowledge base takes at least two generations. This is why a brain drain is a horrible thing. It can permanently shift an economic activity from one nation to another, and you don't want to lose the wealth generation of STEM industries.

In order to reverse the brain drain, the corporations like IBM that caused it must now invest in STEM by hiring and paying high salaries to the very workers they screwed over. They have to do this for 20 years in order to convince the next generation, those being born today, to enter into STEM fields. But I highly doubt they would do that. Capitalism rewards short-term greed, not long-term investment. Executives are rewarded based on quarterly gains even if those gains come at the expense of destroying the company or the underlying industry. In particular, Fortune 500 companies have used the past 20 years to sell off America's STEM industry for a tiny fraction of what it was worth. Then their CEOs bought yachts with the profits from the sales. Had we kept these industries, the profits from them would have been enough to buy navies, not just yachts.

Essentially, this is what happened to manufacturing during the 1970s and 1980s. It is what happened to agriculture in the early 20th century. Maybe it's inevitable. But don't then claim that we could or even should encourage a generation of young adults to give up other opportunities to enter a STEM field. Those young adults aren't that foolish, and it is unethical to trick them into forgoing prosperous careers for ones that are obsolete by design.

Rin says

Peter P says

Rin says

New Renter says

So far all I have heard from you people is of a shortage of exceptional (competent) programmers in the SFBA

BTW, there is a shortage of exceptional prop traders in finance.

And the reason for that is they're already millionaires and thus, demand more of the firm's bonuses than anyone else.

If anything, you want to be that *unicorn*.

Yeah. That skill is even harder to come by. Worse yet, some promising prop traders are false prophets who end up losing big.

Fortunately, our firm has got one of them and thus, I'm externally grateful that he's kept our system going, whereas otherwise, we would have burnt out by year 3.

Here's a classic trajectory of one, who's starting out as a full timer ...

Year One, $70K-100K salary, light on the bonus.

Then someone in the back office analyzes this person's work. Then year two,

Year Two, $150K salary, $300K bonus

Now, the partners are convinced ...

Year Three, $250K salary, $500K-$1M bonus
Year Four, $250K salary, $1M plus

And then, you lose count of the decimal places.

Great, a target for my kid to shoot for! What can I do to encourage my kid to head down that path?

Also what's the fallback position should that first year not work out?

New Renter says

Also what's the fallback position should that first year not work out?

Become a salesman.

Our receptionist, BTW, is taking the Patent Agent exam, after she completes her MS, part-time.

The key is be around business-y occupations where your job is not R&D and all that *cost center stuff* but more geared towards revenue
generation (sales & consulting) or revenue protection (legalese & tax).

Dan8267 says

Essentially, this is what happened to manufacturing during the 1970s and 1980s. It is what happened to agriculture in the early 20th century. Maybe it's inevitable. But don't then claim that we could or even should encourage a generation of young adults to give up other opportunities to enter a STEM field. Those young adults aren't that foolish, and it is unethical to trick them into forgoing prosperous careers for ones that are obsolete by design.

What needs to happen is that we need to put science and engineering students on a means tested, welfare/state sponsorship program, as stated in one of my prior threads.

Both academia and industry have failed the American scientists and engineers. There's no point in trying to put humpty dumpty back together.

http://patrick.net/?p=1240106

Rin says

put science and engineering students on a means tested, welfare/state sponsorship program

Why have you switched to a means tested program instead of a program that pays based on results or at least effort? Your original proposal said, "Then, in order to maintain one's stipend, a new exam must be taken every two years." Now you've shifted to means testing? That seems like the opposite of your own stated plan for your own future, i.e. you would be discouraging yourself from signing up. In addition, you would be creating a disincentive to do research that might prove moderately lucrative, because participants would fear losing their stipend.

curious2 says

Curious why a means tested program instead of a program that pays based on results or at least effort? Your original proposal said, "Then, in order to maintain one's stipend, a new exam must be taken every two years." Now you've shifted to means testing? That seems like the opposite of your own stated plan for your own future, i.e. you would be discouraging yourself from signing up. In addition, you would be creating a disincentive to do research that turns out to be moderately lucrative, because participants would fear losing their stipend.

Here's the thing ... real creative work, may or may not pay anything. Did any of Leonardo Da Vinci's flying machines ever come to fruition? No, Leo was a few centuries short of realizing his vision.

Plus, if one does write a best selling novel or screenplay, during his time on sponsorship, like let's say the next generation *Harry Potter series*, a paltry stipend pales in comparison to the royalties of a best seller.

Also, if I wanted to make money as let's say an Anesthesiologist, I'd also leave this STEM sponsorship program, because I'd be content being a gas doctor for the medical establishment.

The only reason why I'm in finance today, if you factor out the esc*rts in Canada, is that I know that in order to do my own independent studies/research, etc, I'd need my own source of income, independent of a full time job.

If I were let's say 19 to 29 and such a program were in place, perhaps I would have given up on becoming a BS artist/hedge fund manager and instead, did my own research under this stipend.

As for the exam, if you like the sciences, studying a new technical subject every two years isn't a big deal. In fact, I'd welcome it, as it would broaden my horizons. And yes, it's a way of gauging one's passions of the STEM areas.

Maybe the management has gone to your head, but you seem to have restated the question without answering it.

Rin says

curious2 says

Curious why a means tested program instead of a program that pays based on results or at least effort?

***
If I were let's say 19 to 29 and such a program was in place, perhaps I would have given up on becoming a BS artist/hedge fund manager and instead, did my own research under this stipend.
***

curious2 says

Maybe the management has gone to your head, but you seem to have restated the question without answering it.

You don't seem to be grasping it ... I despise corporate America. This entire hedge fund thing was born out of a bunch of engineers, looking for a way out of being exploited by the current system.

In a short time, the senior partners at this firm will buy out my equity and I'll be retired.

The fact that we are currently successful is fortuitous but in reality, I would have preferred if society gave me the resources, to pursue my own interests, without having to jump through all these hoops.

In today's world, you just can't work for let's say Honeywell Corp, be put under a miscellaneous R&D budget code, and spend your time on creative ventures. No, that group will be laid off and then, those who are leftover, will be justifying their hours to execs.

The current system is broken.

You have made your motivations and emotions clear, but you still haven't answered the question.

curious2 says

Why have you switched to a means tested program instead of a program that pays based on results or at least effort?

I have been wondering lately why STEM graduates succeed in some areas but fail at designing policy, e.g. Herbert Hoover was a very successful engineer but a terribly unsuccessful president. I think it's because they tend not to apply the same discipline to thinking through policy. If you want to design a successful policy, it might help you to think it through like a chain reaction, or in Dan's case a computer program. (The advantage in policy continues to be as Machiavelli wrote: technology changes, but human nature remains constant. As a result, you can draw on a longer history of examples in policy than in software.)

If you look at Pruitt-Igoe, means testing resulted in catastrophic failure. The buildings were literally torn down and destroyed because they became uninhabitable. How? A major factor was means testing rent as a % of income. The next steps in the chain reaction followed predictably: ppl who made most of their money illegally (theft, extortion, prostitution, drug dealing) declared minimal income and paid minimal rent, while people who had legal wages found they could do better moving elsewhere. The result was an uninhabitable neighborhood dominated by violent crime.

Applying this lesson to your STEM program, the likely consequence of means testing would be to divert research into better ways to cook meth, developing new varieties of meth, and new ways to smuggle meth (think Traffic). All the income is undeclared, so participants don't risk their stipend, and the potential for jackpots is huge. If you want people to research useful things that might be slightly lucrative, you should avoid policies that would punish them for finding something.

On a personal level, what's interesting to grasp is how you missed the question twice. You're obviously bright, but you changed the conditions of your policy proposal perhaps without even noticing, and then perhaps your emotional attachment to the position may have blinded you to the repeated question about it.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/3nyEvgCK4wg

Rin says

Here's the thing ... real creative work, may or may not pay anything. Did any of Leonardo Da Vinci's flying machines ever come to fruition? No, Leo was a few centuries short of realizing his vision.

I'm not so sure about that last part:

In WWII several British POW's built a WORKING glider out of bedsheets, porridge, and castle floor boards as prisoners of war in Colditz castle, Germany's most "secure" prison.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/naziprison/colditz.html

The castle was already a few hundred years old by the time Leonardo was working on his flying contraptions. The prisoners were liberated on the eve of their escape attempt and the original glider was lost to history but an exact recreation made 65 years later with the same materials flew beautifully.

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-03-17/colditz-castle-glider-escape-plot-realised-more-than-65-years-after-the-war

Leonardo had access to the same and better materials e.g. silk, spruce wood, purpose built fixtures. He also had MUCH better tools available and he was not under armed guard.

If his flying contraptions didn't work it was because the designs were flawed. Seriously do you think THIS could ever fly?

I let Rin's DaVinci comment go, but it did remind me of a PBS program where the participants built a glider based on DaVinci's designs and it did fly successfully. The issue was, modern people have the benefit of hindsight to know which designs were most likely to work, and modern safety equipment, and the British team on PBS had the British NHS. Leo had no way to know which of his designs would eventually succeed, and if anything went wrong the combined risks of injury and 16th century medicine were very discouraging.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/XC74ImdHaLQ

curious2 says

Applying this lesson to your STEM program, the likely consequence of means testing would be to divert research into better ways to cook meth, developing new varieties of meth, and new ways to smuggle meth (think Traffic). All the income is undeclared, so participants don't risk their stipend, and the potential for jackpots is huge. If you want people to research useful things that might be slightly lucrative, you should avoid policies that would punish them for finding something.

In defense of the potential illegal activities, illegal activities are lucrative, esp in relation to psychotropics. Once a smart person makes money illicitly, why would he want to take exams, every two years in Complex Variables or Non-Linear Dynamical Systems?

You see, the hope of using this govt money to live a life of being a big time drug maker, while maintaining a postdoc stipend, makes little sense. I mean it's like the DEA will have access to both, his normal STEM stipend info, plus all the extra lifestyle data he's accumulating being a drug lord. We're not just taking about W-2s but about hotels, cars, vacations, etc. There's little chance that a postdoc could be living large, as a part-time drug maker.

If anything, if I were a drug maker, I'd want to be invisible and off the govt's radar. I'd be on stipend for perhaps, 1 to 3 years and then, disappear, off the grid.

And the difference between the other examples you'd given, meaning inner city housing projects, and mine is that in my scenario, these persons would have to have the intellectual capital or tenacity, to be STEM persons. And of course, being STEM persons, they have the brains to find a way of making money elsewhere, if they don't want to do pure R&D, like finance, patent law, or health care. Many smart ppl will leave the purity of research, to become a salesman. I did.

Maybe I need to re-phrase my question.

curious2 says

Why have you switched to a means tested program instead of a program that pays based on results or at least effort?

Picture two parallel universes, identical in every respect except one. In Universe A, you have your original policy, as you explained it in your prior thread on the topic (which I quoted above). In Universe B, you have your changed policy, which is based on means testing, which you introduced in this new thread. Please can you explain, why is Universe B superior to Universe A?

Rin says

Once a smart person makes money illicitly, why would he want to take exams, every two years in Complex Variables or Non-Linear Dynamical Systems?

People have families. This was part of the dynamic in Pruitt-Igoe; the issue is not only the prostitute in apartment 4Z or whatever, but also her three kids, who shoplift. A legal stipend like aid to women with dependent children provides a nice cover for how you make a living, while the illicit cash piles up along with toys bought with cash and accumulating in a barn somewhere. Also, you seem to have assumed, mistakenly, that the prostitute in 4Z (or whatever) isn't smart; in fact, she is acting rationally within her policy environment, and succeeding by evolutionary terms.