Cheap 22 yr olds out of school

I used to work for a startup that used those cheap 22 yr olds fresh out of college.
Some of them didn't even have coding on their transcript, but the company assumed that
I, a woman on a higher level, will somehow "train them on the job".
Nope they didn't learn enough to keep us going. There was no time for that, there was
always deadlines and rush rush rush.
The projects flunked.
Eventually **** The startup flunked. ****

My good friend works for a huge company that spent 40 mil USD on software that is written and maintained by those 22 yr olds straight from college. They are probably cheap.
That software has major problems and is not working in the field.
THE WHOLE 40mil PROJECT FAILED.
This is a conversation those kids had at work in the cubicle next to my friend:
"What is interface?"
"... Um... interface is when you interface something."

My friend also used to work for a large company that employed all E. European immigrants for dirt cheap and held them at work as if in prison. With all kinds of stupid rules etc. My friend got his green card and then escaped to a better company. However, they asked him to come back for a good sum of money because he is the only one who knows what is happening and can actually code. He is totally not convinced that they wouldn't use him and throw him out, so he is asking for LOTS of money, 1yr contract, and is going to open his own company afterwords.

That same company also employed some consultants from India who took their money and disappeared. There was no communication. That project just died.

Every time I called earthlink or whatever other tech support and got someone from India or wherever to help me, they are completely incompetent and NEVER were able to solve ANY of the technical problems. I always fix it myself.
Last time I spent 2 hrs with someone on line and finally *** I *** found the bug.
It was very simple: I was using webmail and then downloaded my mail several times into Outlook. Everything I downloaded after the 1st try disappeared. But - Outlook sorts mail by date when it was received, not when it was downloaded. After 2 hours, I finally saw those "missing" emails in the midst of my email. IF TECH SUPPORT DOESN"T KNOW THIS SIMPLE THING, what kind of tech support are they????

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Obviously, I totally do NOT believe in paying cheap labor, because you get what you pay for. Cheap labor is good for some things, but it cannot be the whole game you play, or else you pay dearly for it.

Paying cheap labor and exploiting others is a way to cover incompetency of the local managers. For example, the company that only employs 22yr olds is because the manager is stupid and needs incompetent people in order to puff himself up. It is easy to intimidate and keep down a 22yr old straight out of college. The person has no experience and needs guidance.

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This is the same old story as always - exploitation on planet Earth because human race is just below worthy of being called evolved.

So exploitation of women, children, different colors, religions, anything that is different and doesn't have as many "guns and ships" than whoever has "most guns and ships" at the moment and thus feels free to bully others.

The story of how women are not promoted up is that same exploitation story.

But the fascinating thing is how this is showing how the USA does not practice what it preaches. It always preached heavy duty capitalism, "the best wins," which worked so far because there was nobody to compete with. Suddenly it is finding itself in a playing field with other people very capable of winning. India, China, Russia all have SUPER good education and can compete very well. Japan already "won".

This really is a call for a much wiser way of doing things, the "wise woman way" if you wish to call it to distingusih it from the current "slash and burn" egoistical way of thinking propagated by most men (and women) in power. Capable men (and women) think in the "wise woman way".

One good thing about all this is that more jobs etc for cheap 22yr olds out of college and for outsourcing to the developing countries means more freedom for women who get those jobs. That part is truly changing the world.



>> In America, there is a shortage of cheap 22-year-olds
>> fresh out of college with exactly the right list of 14 languages
>> and 27 technologies on their resumes, but that
>> is solved using H1B and paying them below market rates,
>> males or females.

>> There is a shortage of people who can do computers AND something else, like
>> computers and biology, computers and business, etc.

Things to consider when getting a new job

Q: I could move from Texas and work for Stanford. Comments?

Milica: Let's compile a list of things to consider:

how exciting is the work place? I bet Stanford is way cool - the people are smart and they must be doing some very interesting work. It is probably nice to be in such invigorating environment.

The down side of "invigorating":
do you have to work 1000 hrs per week under stress? which you might say YES because it is interesting to you, you have no kids, etc.

does it pay well?

is it independent job where you call the shots and nobody is pestering you, or will there be some moron politics?

how about growth and promotion? related to the items above.

do you like living in that town? Silicon Valley will be the most competitive, enterprenural spot on the entire Earth. People will be swapping their startup business cards during your kids soccer game. Do you like that?

Last but not least: no matter how bad it is, is it better than what you have now; or maybe the only thing now (e.g lost job etc.)

Seems like you have the reins in your hands, they asked you, so go interview and see how you like it. From Texas to Silicon Valley is a huge cultural jump.

math sung

Math song

This is a household song back home, it was a very popular children tv show.

Mate, mate, mathematics
It is a science, mathematics,
It is a real science, mathematics

It teaches to think, to count, to measure,
to multiply and increase, to divide and decrease,
subtract and add

To know and to write it down, what is larger what is more,
to see easily what is smaller, what is equal,
what is left, what is right,
what is under, what is over,
what is in between, what is the middle, what a cube what a sphere

That is all real knowledge
that is a real science

mathematics!



Mate, mate, matema, matematika

To je jedna nauka, matematika
To je prava nauka, matematika

Tu se uci da se misli, da se broji, da se meri,
da se mnozi, uvecava, da se deli i smanjuje
oduzima, i dodaje

da se znade, da se pise sta je vece sta je vise

da se pozna vrlo lako sta je manje sta jednako
sta je levo sta je desno
sta je ispod sta je iznad
sta izmedju, sta sredina, sta kocka, sta oblina

sve je ovo pravo znanje, to je prava nauka,

matema, matema, matematika


===Comment from Claudia:
Well, that was cute!! The tune is catchy - even though I don't understand the language. I think that it would fun for kids to learn in the original language as well as learning the translation in whatever their native language is.

Thank you for sharing.

Math is easy for girls in progressive countries...

The recent study published in the Journal Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, summarized at:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,524338,00.html?test=latestnews

has a rather obvious conclusion. ?Where there is greater gender inequality,
girls perform worse in math. ?Where there is less, girls perform better, and
even have similar variation in math skills.

The short of it: The math gap can't be explained away purely by
inherent biological ability.


Tuesday, June 2, 2009 13:20 PDT
Breaking: Girls are good at math!

Maybe the infamous Barbie doll who announced that "math is hard" was
on to something -- that is, if she had continued on to say "when you
live in a sexist society." A new study shows that differences between
boys' and girls' math performance has more to do with gender
inequality than hard-wired ability. (Here's a freebie for all the
young'uns in the audience: "But, ma, it's society's fault that I
failed my math test!") Not only that, but it pokes a hole in Lawrence
Summers hypothesis that men innately show more variability in
mathematical ability.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison compared global
studies of math ability with countries' rankings in the World Economic
Forum's Gender Gap Index, which is calculated based on differences in
education, financial clout, health and political power. Well, color me
unsurprised: Countries with greater gender inequality showed a larger
gap in mathematical performance, and vice versa. Iran, for example,
had a poor gender equality ranking and a low percentage of
high-scoring girls in the International Mathematical Olympiad. The
opposite was true for the United States, where girls on average
perform just as well as boys and sexual parity ranks relatively high.

I gave lead researcher Janet Hyde a ring to chat about why this was
true -- could the cause be narrowed down to access to math education,
for example -- and she suggested that there "are lots of sociocultural
factors at work." Hyde, a University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology
professor, said: "It may have to do with the percentage of women in
the labor force, inside technology and computers, teaching math and
science at the college level" -- the list goes on and on.

The short of it: The math gap can't be explained away purely by
inherent biological ability.

So, what about Summers' controversial suggestion -- are there more
hard-wired male math geniuses? The study shows that in some countries
and ethnic groups girls' and boys' math ability is equally variable.
That's not to mention that the gender gap in the higher percentiles
has been shrinking dramatically in the U.S. As the study puts it: "It
is largely an artifact of changeable sociocultural factors, not
immutable, innate biological differences between the sexes."

This reminds me of a conversation I recently had with a kick-ass
doctoral candidate at Stanford who's working on a cutting-edge HIV
treatment. I had the embarrassing misfortune of sitting next to her on
a panel of fellow alumnae who were deemed to be "doing interesting
things." (Now that's a tough act to follow: Oh, you're trying to save
several million people's lives? Well, I ... blog.) She felt lucky that
her confidence in math and science was never crushed -- by teachers or
a nasty classroom environment -- and said something along the lines
of:

**** Once girls lose that confidence, it's over for them.




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