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| After the conference call, Zuck headed to the Oingo-Boingo reunion concert |
Zuckerberg: America's Failure To Produce Engineers Is 'Systemic' (FB)
Jim Edwards
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg got political on his Q2 2013 earnings call yesterday, criticizing America for not producing enough talented engineers for him to recruit.
Zuckerberg's views on this issue are no secret. He's given $100 million to the Newark, N.J., school system to improve education there. And he's backed a controversial lobbying group, FWD.us, which wants to reform immigration law so that companies can recruit foreign engineers and tech workers more easily.
But yesterday, Zuckerberg again hinted that he thinks America is broken when it comes to educating people to take the science, technical, engineering and math (STEM) jobs that he's creating.
In other news today, from Bloomberg.com:
Zuckerberg’s Wealth Soars $3.8 Billion as Facebook Surges
It's worth noting that, all else being equal, Zuckerberg's net worth increasing by almost $4 billion today makes Americans more likely to give him the immigration bill he wants. It's not just practical considerations like, wow, he now has even more money to spend on lobbying so we should be nice to him so that maybe he'll be nice to us. No, the psychology is even more primitive than that: it's just the sheer strong juju of any man who makes $3.8 billion in one day that makes us want more good things to happen to him.
Heck, I feel that way most of the time. (Indeed, much of what I write is the opposite of my natural emotional predilections -- that's why I write it: because it took me a long time to figure things out.)
In contrast, if Zuckerberg's net worth had declined $3.8 billion today because Facebook profits were down because he was paying his employees so much higher salaries, there would be much scoffing at Zuckerberg's lobbying for more H-1B visas: What a loser!
And that's the way of the world.
Posts
128 comments:
There are not enough Engineers in Silicon Valley
There are not enough American engineers, because American students prefer Women's Studies or "Management" majors.
Therefore, we need Indian and Chinese engineers.
Nothing nefarious in that at all. That they aren't white doesn't bother the vast majority of Americans either.
I think Zuckerberg proved his point. As the article states, "He's given $100 million to the Newark, N.J., school system to improve education there."
So far, no software engineers have been produced.
No it isn't that's just defeatist whining. I mean honestly what a sad loser post. If you had a.megaphone the he just made 4 billion whys he need cheaper programmers would be highly effective you just don't have one so no one listens.
it ain't entirely about cheap labor. facebook does pay its superstar employees generous pay & compensation packages. it's about displacing white people and eventually the constitution so they (the creators) can have unfettered power.
Ok, so he gives 100m to "improve education", presumably to help produce more engineers.
We know all that money is going to be wasted.
How about taking that 100m, divide it up and raise salaries of FB engineers on a pro-rata basis.
How many engineers does FB have? Wikipedia says FB has 4900 employees. The IT industry is extremely promiscuous in its use of "engineer" so there are probably 2-3k employees there with "engineer" in their title or job description.
However, I'd be surprised if there are even 2-300 that actually need a formal engineering education there. But lets be liberal and say 1000.
That's a 100k bonus for each engineer there above their base salary. Assume Zuckerberg does this sort of feelgood donation every year or three, that is a 50k permanent raise for all his engineers.
Try paying average FB engineer 50k (and that is very conservative) above current rates and I guarantee you that he will have all the high quality engineers that FB could possibly use, which, again, is actually fairly minimal for the vast majority of its operations.
I don't disagree with Zuck regarding high schools. It's a complete disgrace. Despite that, America still produces an abundance of high school graduates who've completed AP Calculus, Chemistry, Biology, and Physics.
The main reason why America doesn't produce as many STEM college graduates is that so many slots are given to foreign students from Asia.
We have plenty of kids who are qualified to go the STEM route, but sometimes they're not as competitive in their first and second years of college. Discouraged, many pursue other majors.
I bet if he spent $100 million to start a homeschool program for computer programming, he'd get way more bang for the buck. Probably improve his return by infinity, since he will get a return of zero from Newark.
Option #2 would be to take the $100 million and spend it in West Virginia.
You can't fix stupid. But you can stop stupid from influencing government policy.
Danny Elfman doppelgänger, yeah I kinda see that.
He could give $100 trillion to the Newark public school system; with the demographics of that place, I don't think it will make the slightest difference in terms of the numbers of HS students competent enough to go into good software engineering programs.
That place is a real cesspool. I should know, I live about 20 minutes away by car. Try giving the cash to fund more police to do stop-and-frisk like NYC or to crack down on drugs and gangs, and you'll do far more for the lives of the kids there who actually do have potential than you would by giving more $ to the schools.
There are not enough metrosexual American engineers, therefore, we need Indian, Chinese, and Indo-Chinese engineers.
OK, so the Golden Tool wants some cheap engineers. Why the insistence in taking tens of millions of low-IQ mestizos along in tow?
I bet if he spent $100 million to start a homeschool program for computer programming, he'd get way more bang for the buck. Probably improve his return by infinity, since he will get a return of zero from Newark.
A $100 million homeschool program for computer programming would also be the greatest anti-bullying measure in history.
He may be flushing $100m down the toilet, but at least it's going down the Commode Of The Angels.
Has anyone ever wasted $100 million faster than Zuckerberg did by flushing it down the toilet of the Newark Public School System?
Talk about Brewster's Millions!
Shows you how stupid Zuckerberg actually is.
If he was really that smart, he would've done something like giving it to PIttsburgh, PA area schools for scholarships for bright but poor local students to go to Carnegie Mellon. Get the "urban" cred for donating to a city district, but not totally waste the money on NAM's like in Newark.
He also wrote the theme to The Simpsons
"After the conference call, Zuck headed to the Oingo-Boingo reunion concert"
Oingo-Boingo: Seven talentend musicians..........and Danny Elfman.
Holy shit Steve, I thought you said you would be working around the house for a few days!
Anyway, Zuckerberg should spend lots of money in DC. There are lots of people laying about street corners here who could become Robot Scientists like in Terminator II, if you know what I mean. All it takes is money.
"That place is a real cesspool. I should know, I live about 20 minutes away by car."
Anywhere near Millburn? A nasty attack there not too long ago. But you ought to hit the JC Heights. Gentrification at work!
Instapundit sez:
I’M BEGINNING TO LOSE CONFIDENCE IN FACEBOOK: Facebook removes the same posts, and blocks Michael Z. Williamson again, for which they apologized for removing before.
11
Posted at 10:45 am by Glenn Reynolds
As far as Americans admiring Zuckerberg for his limitless avarice while not caring one whit for his disolyalty to his fellow countrymen, it would seem that that "Greed is good" movie message fell on fertile human soil.
" facebook does pay its superstar employees generous pay & "
Superstar employees? It's Facebook. I consider that to be lower than the National Inquirer.
It's an online refrigerator door or bulletin board.
Why waste talent on that?
"Holy shit Steve, I thought you said you would be working around the house for a few days!"
Steve just decided to hire a few illegals for the day to paint his house and cut his grass.
If you can't beat them, join them.
http://vultureofcritique.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/clusterzuck.jpg
I am my own illegal alien Guatemalan (Mexicans are passe and too full of {reconquista} themselves) groundskeeper, mowing my grass and trimming things.
Shut off us wacky chatterboxes and go do that work, Steve. It's been a rough month, take a mental health break before you go on.
I wrote the following not as a put down, but just because it's highly likely that all of the frequent commenters here are OCD to some extent, but I never see any comments on this topic so others (including our host) might find it useful.
It's interesting that Steve has some housework he has to do, so back to the blog with renewed vengeance! :) I figure the suggestion to not comment was as much a plea for help as anything, to just go away and do something productive ourselves so that he doesn't feel the need to approve comments.
But stop the press, Zuckerberg has just trolled the world with some other moronic statement, so Steve feels compelled to reply! And these are as good a posts as any, and I like reading them too. I can't help but notice that Steve is exhibiting the same sort of behavior that I've noticed in my own life as of a few months ago.
I know lots of obsessive, successful (and not so successful, but at least very intelligent) who joke about having OCD. I've done it for years. But it was only recently that I actually looked up the symptoms and realized I probably have it to some extent.
Naturally, rather than pay money to some shrink I thought I'd just google how to deal with it better myself. It turns out one of the most effective ways to combat it is something called "ERP", or Exposure Response Prevention Therapy. It's worth googling and making notes on.
Essentially what seems to happen is that your brain gets stuck in the one gear, that is - using your frontal lobes to think about one subject obsessively, and finding it difficult to step back and see what you are doing and should be doing. So, if your brain is stuck thinking "I must approve more comments" and "I must check the news" and "oh, Zuck's just said something I can write a post on", while really you need to be cleaning out the basement or doing your taxes, or whatever it is, you need to take a step back and say to yourself "I'm just having a compulsive urge to use the internet right now. It's not me, it's my OCD. These comments can wait. They'll still be there when I get back, as will my readership, who have OCD, and will be obsessively clicking refresh on iSteve until I get back, which will almost certainly happen. I'll just go and do some cleaning (or whatever) for five minutes before I check the internet again."
Zuck is becoming quite the 21st-century robber baron.
Software developers should unionize big time; after they invent a program that effectively herds cats.
Just to emphasize how bad Newark is: when driving through the city, drivers are advised to not stop at red lights.
Facebook, as a technology, relies on disposable and replaceable assets. Facebook isn't reliant on any technology that they had to pay licensing fees for--it's all open source, free to extend hardware and software. The complicated software that runs Facebook cost Zuckerberg next to nothing; why should the people who fiddle with the levers cost more than that?
Google suffers from the same problem: a system designed by very smart people to need the fewest smart people to run it.
It's not a bad idea, but it's not an intrinsically good idea.
Put another way, if everybody could buy a Ferrari, nobody who really cared would want to.
"There are not enough American engineers, because American students prefer Women's Studies or "Management" major."
BS. Been there, done that. Finance and real estate are full of degreed engineers many with MBAs to mask the dorkiness of an engineering degree. American business has had a goal of making engineering a cheap labor category since at least the mid-1980s. That's why they always scream about the lack of engineers, there is a lack of CHEAP engineers, just like there is a lack of cheap stoop laborers, cherry pickers and chalupas.
"Software developers should unionize big time..."
Good advice, before you get hit in the forehead with the diversity/inclusion 2x4. The only proven effective defense against HR-directed diversity/inclusion actions is labor organization, whether it be unionization or professional certification.
Big Data Analysis Adds to Guest Worker Debate
By QUENTIN HARDY and SOMINI SENGUPTA
July 23, 2013, 10:23 am
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
SAN FRANCISCO — Although certain kinds of engineers are in short supply in the United States, plenty of potential candidates exist for thousands of positions for which companies want to import guest workers, according to an analysis of three million résumés of job seekers in the United States...
"I didn't expect this result," said Steve Goodman, Bright's chief executive.
Bright is based in San Francisco, and it makes money in part by placing qualified candidates with recruiters and, according to Mr. Goodman, employs workers using H-1B visas. "We're Silicon Valley people, we just assumed the shortage was true," Mr. Goodman said. "It turns out there is a little Silicon Valley groupthink going on about this, though it's not comfortable to say that."
For a few job categories, like computer systems analysts, there are relatively few "good fits" among American applicants, Bright found. Computer systems analyst jobs, considered relatively low-skilled in the tech world, had four openings for every American candidate. For others, like high-skilled computer programmers, there were more than enough potential candidates in the United States, the company found...
I just posted the NY Times "Bright" link, and I entered fake numbers in the "Rat on your Neighbors and Help Us Read their House Number Signs" NKVD campaign.
Or Mossad, or whatever the heck is.
And I also just confirmed that it does NOT work if you try to fake the alphabetical "CAPTCHA".
I'm sure that Zuckerberg knows giving $100 million to the Newark school system won't produce any engineers. It was just a PR stunt to advance the idea that he desperately needs engineers. If he wanted American kids to become engineers, he'd be putting that money into white affluent suburbs where the parents value education.
I think the focus on Zuckerberg's bottom line in the immigration debate is wrong-headed. Zuckerberg is not pro-immigation because he wants cheap programmers, he just thinks American programmers are inferior because he is product of the American school-university system.
America? Produces too few STEM graduates compared to other countries because Americans are stupid and greedy.
America will need few if any foreign programmers once all the Zuckerbergian Lebrons of Linux from the Newark public schools are ready to rock.
If I give 2.5% of the money I make in one day to a local school, will the national press take my views on immigration seriously?
Try paying average FB engineer 50k (and that is very conservative) above current rates and I guarantee you that he will have all the high quality engineers that FB could possibly use
Exactly. To beat my drum yet again: this isn't about the geniuses. They get paid well because there aren't that many of them, so as you point out, he could give each of them a raise big enough to pay off their homes in a couple of years and it wouldn't cost him any more than he spent on one charitable donation he made for political purposes. (Though lowering wages at the bottom will depress them at the top in the long run, so it's win-win for him.) It's about the rooms full of low-level coders, techs, and customer service drones.
It's no different from fruit-picking: the corporate farm doesn't want more guest worker visas so it can get cheaper managers and accountants; it wants them so it can get cheaper fruit pickers. The pickers don't make as much individually, but they make far more as a group, and they're less likely to go to the competition than a talented manager.
"Anonymous said...
There are not enough Engineers in Silicon Valley
There are not enough American engineers, because American students prefer Women's Studies or "Management" majors.
Therefore, we need Indian and Chinese engineers."
There are plenty of engineers in Iowa, so why not hire them? Those Chinese and Indian engineers aren't "in" Silicon Valley either.
You are either an idiot or a stooge. Perhaps both.
"Anonymous said...
Superstar employees? It's Facebook. I consider that to be lower than the National Inquirer.
It's an online refrigerator door or bulletin board.
Why waste talent on that?"
Quite so. People talk about Facebook as if it's some kind of national treasure, like Intel or IBM. It isn't. It is an electronic portal for a vast world-wide kaffee-klatsch. As you say, it would actually be a shame to waste real talent on so useless and mundane a thing.
Anon at 4:35 PM
Of course, you are a liar. There were always Native Born White American Engineers and Programmers..but they wanted to be paid a high wage. Massive race-replacement in the tech field with hindus,koreans, and chinese had the following consequence: Native Born White American Engineers tell their kids and family members to stay out of the tech field, and the asians being to dominate the field and become the gatekeepers.
It didn't have to be this way you know. Remember the photo Steve put up a about the NASA Mission Control Room? Abour 99 percent Native Born White American Male. America,when it was 90 percent Native Born White American, put 12 alpha Native Born Native Born White American Males with advanced engineering degees on the Moon. You, Bill Gates,Mark Zuckerberg and the asians want to make sure that this never happens again.
As for Americans caring..the Native Born White American victims of the H-1B and L-1 B visa programs-and is earlier incarnation under Nixon and Carter- care, as do their wives and childen. And more generally, more and more Native Born White Americans are catching on to the open and deliberate policy to have them race-replaced very rapidly and they don't like.
It is an open and deliberate policy to destroy centuries of acquired engineering,tech, and medical experience..Native Born White American Variety..that is to say, a massive deskilling of the Native Born White American Population who in fact can survive quite well without hardly any asians in America at all...think Steve's NASA photo from the 60's.
The very demogtaphic group..Native Born White American..that made America a safe,stable,civilized,prosperous society so wittle Marky Zuckerberg and parents could prosper at high degree is being destroyed by the twerpy psychopath Mark Zuckerberg. And when American Society is destroyed , where will wittle Marky live then?
Moreover, no one here should have any doubt that wittle Marky is waging a particular kind of demographic-ethnic warfare against the Native Born White American Majority.
Bill Blizzard and his Men(it happened before...and it can happen again wittle Marky)
""How about taking that 100m, divide it up and raise salaries of FB engineers on a pro-rata basis..."
Brilliant idea, Karl Marx. Except that he already has them working for him for what he's paying now
Steve always promoting the south but the south has one of the highest poverty rates. So, Texas and the Carolinas don't lead to much mobility. They only lead to having a bigger house. Texas has had poverty rates from 16 to 18 percntt for 30 years even adjusting for costing of living but Steve promotes it or North Carolina which still has a poor white region near the mountains. Percentage of residents living in poverty in 2009: 13.7% See Nebraska does better than most of the south for mobility.
(9.0% for White Non-Hispanic residents, 31.6% for Black residents, 18.6% for Hispanic or Latino residents)
Average household size:
This city: 2.5 people
Nebraska: 2.3 people
Read more: http://www.city-data.com/city/Omaha-Nebraska.html#ixzz2a9fuAycu
Zuck is becoming quite the 21st-century robber baron.
Software developers should unionize big time; after they invent a program that effectively herds cats.²
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2147711,00.html
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2013/07/joe-klein-immigration-will-save-the-u-s-from-white-racism/
“Trayvon’s Death Is an Outrage, But …Thanks to immigration, stronger laws and years of hard work, our poisonous biracial era is ending.”
I suppose poisonous triracial era is better.
More black vs brown.
Think about this guy the next time the repubs whine about how we can't go raising taxes on the "job creators" and such. Zuck and his ilk are cash cows for the dems and yet the GOP protect them like they were family. And they wonder why they can't pick up that extra three percent of the white electorate or reconnect with the Reagan Democrats. Idiocy.
Funcrusher wrote:
"Zuck is becoming quite the 21st-century robber baron."
He's doing something Jews have always done in the USA, generation after generation (i.e., advocating for more immigration) -- something they are quite zealous about.
I guess it's less sexy to play that angle. Calling him a robber-baron is at once more exciting and safer.
His personal motivation may be no different from Jewish journalist Joe Klein's, who just wrote: "Trayvon's Death Is an Outrage, But …Thanks to immigration, stronger laws and years of hard work, our poisonous biracial era is ending."
Programmers have an alternative to unionizing, and that is a denial of service to critical banking infrastructure until the Federal government regains legitimacy by defending US territory from invasion.
That this has not already happened* is a testament to their civic forbearance.
*Maybe I should qualify this, as it is possible crypto-currency (eg Bitcoin) is an attack that, because it cannot be stopped, is designed to bring down the illegitimate US Federal government rather than reigning it in. There is some logic to that given the intransigence of the Federal government toward its citizens' just demand that the Federal government perform its primary service for which they pay taxes and blood.
Schools want as many foreign students as possible because they pay full tuition. Americans pay in-state tuition rates or even expect to get scholarships. It's all about the revenue.
You might get a few more American born STEM graduates if they knew they wouldn't be replaced by foreign engineers and that their careers wouldn't be over at the age of 40.
However, realistically under the current system, unless you are very bright, most Americans are better off taking a liberal arts major and getting a government job. Very few engineers will ever do as well financially as an AA-hire public school superintendent who can make a quarter-mil a year and retire early on a six digit pension with 100% free, 100% coverage health-care for life. When I was a kid back in the 60's going into STEM made more sense so a lot of us did. Modern American kids are making decisions based on how the system works today.
Zuckerberg also wants the low IQ immigrants because they will guarantee that his Democratic party will become the permanent power like the PRI in Mexico.
Uh oh, America is losing the global race for talent:
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130726044330-8451-why-america-is-losing-the-global-race-for-talent?trk=tod-home-art-large_0
Possible reason more smart kids don't go into engineering:
It's a lousy job. You get to sit in a cheesy cubicle, working for a jerk and getting mediocre pay. Anyone with some intelligence and math skills will earn a lot more and get more respect in financial analysis.
What any working engineer knows is Dilbert isn't a joke, it's real.
Managers treat engineers as not far above cattle, something you buy in bulk and lay off as needed. The engineers are at the bottom of the social totem pole at most companies.
Anonymous said...Has anyone ever wasted $100 million faster than Zuckerberg did by flushing it down the toilet of the Newark Public School System?
Talk about Brewster's Millions! Shows you how stupid Zuckerberg actually is.
I'm not sure he expected any more than he got from it--some praise from the media. Also, it's a great way to deliver a FU to the American public, short of heaping up the money and setting it on fire like the Joker.
The so-called Robber Barons actualy did great things with their fortunes--established universities, and funded hospital wings, museums, and libraries. The new 0.001-percenters seem to prefer ostentatiously useless stunts like Zuckerberg's, or giving laptops to Libyan schoolchildren.
If you had a.megaphone the he just made 4 billion whys he need cheaper programmers would be highly effective you just don't have one so no one listens.
I'd ask for a translation but I suspect it's not worth the bother.
I found this curious wits Bill Gates very public pleas for more H1Bs circa 2008. Are they stating that the current population of US citizens lacks enough people with the aptitude to learn the skills they require? If that's not the case, it shouldn't be that hard to develop curriculum necessary to properly train future software engineers. The most capable generally flock to the professions with the highest pay, often with little concern to how interesting they find a particular field, and this field definitely has a cool factor to it that is attractive to college age students.
There seems to be a general lack of appreciation for this countries ability to galvanize to achieve a common goal among these tech titans. They are going the easier route for a reason, and I don't believe they are being forthright about what that reason really is.
"If I give 2.5% of the money I make in one day to a local school, will the national press take my views on immigration seriously?"
No, but Mikey from Mrs. Yardley's 1st period class will get a new loose leaf.
"Very few engineers will ever do as well financially as an AA-hire public school superintendent who can make a quarter-mil a year and retire early on a six digit pension with 100% free, 100% coverage health-care for life."
Yeah, and there are so many of those nowadays.
"There are not enough American engineers, because American students prefer Women's Studies or "Management" majors."
Can we kill this stupid strawman already? Women's Studies is typically one of the tiniest departments at any university. Nobody majors in it anymore. If you're looking for a common fluff degree that leads nowhere, try Psychology.
Anonymous Harry Baldwin said...
I think Zuckerberg proved his point. As the article states, "He's given $100 million to the Newark, N.J., school system to improve education there."
So far, no software engineers have been produced
Given that the population is 49.8% black then I would not expect thta to change much.
ot, but always on topic:
Joe Klein: Immigration will save the U.S. from White racism
There are not enough Engineers in Silicon Valley
Yes, there are. In fact there are too many engineers in Silicon Valley.
Argument by assertion - it's hip, it's happening, it's 21st century!
I think it's a genuinely interesting question to ask whether Zuckerberg is a true believer in our state religion of blank-slate egalitarianism, multiculturalism, etc. Or is he just a cynical plutocrat?
My guess would be that he has drunk a good deal of the Kool Aid himself. He probably believes that Newark schoolkids and millions of Latin campesinos have the same human capital potential as the kids down the street at Palo Alto HS. He probably also genuinely believes that importing an unlimited number of (kinda) smart foreigners is an unmitigated good for the country, because it has probably never occurred to him that a nation should be something other than a deracinated agglomeration of smart people. And I think he also believes at some level that there is a genuine shortage of engineers because, hey, the Great and the Good are always talking about how our school system is "broken."
Zuck's a smart guy, so it's quite possible that I'm wrong, and that he's just a greedy bastard.
But it's more likely that he's just an ambitious, bright, successful guy who has received his Tutsi conventional wisdom by default. He has spent his entire life in the SWPL haute-bourgeoisie and can't imagine any other worldview.
So while it's easy to denigrate Zuck, it's probably a more worthwhile exercise to ask how we can change a system that induces economic illiteracy, naive social theories, and lack of national consciousness among people who really ought to know better.
America? Produces too few STEM graduates compared to other countries because Americans are stupid and greedy.
As an engineer, I'm starting to think we produce fewer STEM graduates compared to other countries because Americans aren't stupid.
What's the point of busting your ass in college when the government is going to cut your earning power off at the knees by swamping the job market with foreigners? I should have gotten a business degree instead.
"Schools want as many foreign students as possible because they pay full tuition."
PPPPTTT. Universities don't live or die by the tuition funds they take in. Tuition, even full tuition, doesn't even begin to cover the moneys spent by universities divided by the number of students.
It's about sucking at the federal gov't's teat through grants, and acquiring big donor bucks, that consume the waking hours of uni presidents. And the anti-White government-media complex wants DIVERSITY (i.e., as few Whites as possible) dammit.
If getting money to pay smart American kids' tuition were really the foremost concern of American uni system, they could simply copy the Indian tribes' tactic and open a casino.
Same thing is true re the myth how, supposedly, college sports programs make the unis money to use to fund the education of smart American kids.
Baloney. A football team, with its ginormous coach's salary, stadium-building expense, and costs of hookers and blow spent recruiting the "student-athletes", is a money-losing proposition.
Again, actual profits to provide smart American (i.e., White) kids with scholarships could much more effectively be acquired by running a casino. BUT, football teams are preferred because they do have the advantage that
"diverse" "student-athletes" fill seats in classrooms that otherwise (horrors) could go to smart White American kids.
Does anyone know what's wrong with Taki's Mag? I've been trying to open it all day without success.
OT but the Archbishop of Canterbury is attacking payday loan shark company Wonga which exploits the poor and charges up to 5000% interest -
the company is, you guessed it, scottish owned..
A friend emailed me the story and commented that it was positively medieval (once version of magna carta specifically makes debts to scots null and void)
I found this curious with Bill Gates very public pleas for more H1Bs circa 2008. Are they stating that the current population of US citizens lacks enough people with the aptitude to learn the skills they require?
It's kind of astonishing how quickly Americans have gone from believing that America can accomplish anything she sets her mind to, to a generation or two later thinking that she's incapable of even basic tasks that any other nation can do. We're supposed to believe that the country that tamed the atom and went to the moon can't teach average kids to troubleshoot a computer anymore, but a society that's still working on getting its sewage out of the streets can turn out expert programmers (working in a second language) by the droves.
And Americans eat this claim up and regurgitate it without a second thought, because....? Certainly not because it makes a lick of sense. Not because they've thought for five seconds about what magic curricula must be used there, or why we couldn't buy a copy to use here.
The main reason seems to be that we like calling other Americans lazy and greedy, as long as they don't work in our own industry, so anything that supports that is believed uncritically by most. I'm not sure when we started hating ourselves so much.
Zuckerberg like Gates before him is lying. Pay enough and there will be droves of engineers knocking at the door. People are not fools, prospective students can see from the parking lots of large companies who drives the Mercedes and who the Datsun.
Anyone else notice what a bad dresser Zuckerberg is? Its preposterous for a man with that much money to look so horrendous. "White sock-mediocracy" indeed.
Here are some of the boring, un-cool, non-diverse and now hated 20th-century American guys who did silly things like bringing modern computing to the world, etc. They didn't need visas (most, anyway). And they likely didn't expend much thought on gender studies. Just trivial stuff like hardware design, software, networks, protocols ;)
http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html
Talk about dreamers. Can you imagine the excitement felt by those giving and witnessing that demo? There were giants, striding forward. These days most respected advances are little, palsied variations on old themes. History has been cruel to those of us paying attention.
http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-07-17/news/all-the-queens-men/
Hilarios. Never laughed so loud.
Classic Diversity and 'Bowling Alone' scenario. Different groups figuring "I'll take all I can."
Some parts of the US might as well be the Third World.
Wiki says Facebook has about 5,000 employees....
So why does anyone care what this nerdy loudmouth has to say ? He's an absolute minnow.
America imports say 1m people a year (legally). And let's say that Zuckerberg grows by 10 % and needs 500 new staff next year. Well, then he's got the first .05 % of the intake covered.
This obnoxious turd doesn't need to sponsor the entire NJ school system, just a village school in rural India.
I understand that he's a genius and all for inventing a message board but WTF ?
Given how destructive he is to Mainstream America, I vote from now on we refer to him as 'F*ck yer 'burg'
Eric wrote: "I picked up a couple myself and took them to me boss and we blew up his car. He was impressed."
My personal dilemma is that one of the few ways I can capitalize on my 40 years experience in computer programming is to make money training young people to go into the software profession.
Its hard to explain to folks who see my resume and employment status why I refuse to accept money to train train local young people.
First of all people aren't used to people with ethics.
Secondly they've been led to believe that domestic programmers with equal skills have an equal shot at the high income positions that are going to foreign aggressors. Its one of those things that's just too depressing to admit to one's self about the horror of the government's oppression of the citizens. This is especially true in rural areas where almost every family has a young man who has served in the military and either killed, or been indoctrinated that is is ok to kill for the government (if they, themselves haven't been permanently disabled if not killed).
'"Very few engineers will ever do as well financially as an AA-hire public school superintendent who can make a quarter-mil a year and retire early on a six digit pension with 100% free, 100% coverage health-care for life."'
'Yeah, and there are so many of those nowadays.'
- Even one is more than ideal. Truth is like someone arguing that there are not very many tumors in their body, so they should ignore them.
'"If I give 2.5% of the money I make in one day to a local school, will the national press take my views on immigration seriously?"'
'No, but Mikey from Mrs. Yardley's 1st period class will get a new loose leaf.'
Shouldn't you be out somewhere with a group of 5 or 10 scowling undergrads holding a Trayvon sign and whining about injustice?
So, one is more [upwardly] mobile if he or she lives in a shoebox size apartment and paying $2500/month rent? Please explain.
North Carolina which still has a poor white region near the mountains.
Yes, it's so sad. Barefoot, got hookworm, missing front teeth, only clothing is an old pair of overalls with one busted shoulder strap. ... You don't any thing about western NC.
Lots of contemporary peepul of the southern Appalachians have bigger houses on bigger lots than you'll probably ever own.
... and this field definitely has a cool factor to it that is attractive to college age students....
What a sucker.
In one of his magazine pieces, I can't remember where, Michael Lewis comapared the goin'-to-Sillycon-Valley-to-make-it-big phenom to the California Gold Rush of the 1840's.
Media hype,then and now.
Same results: Then or now, most of the young male pilgrims to California promised land never get rich, or even financially stable, or sexually satisfied. Same goes for the Chinese coolies brought in to do menial work.
I experienced this first hand in the 1980's working for the old Hughes Aircraft in Los Angeles.
Whiskey probably knows what I'm talking about. Male to female ratio in the South Bay n/1, with n >> 1.
Whiskey, if it's any comfort, you can remind yourself that things are even worse for all the military young dudes in the Sand Diego area.
For a look at a $250K house in Knoxville, scroll down in this story Temper tantrum wife's mother says her 'shattered' daughter has been 'betrayed' by husband who posted humiliating YouTube video of her meltdown ... Knoxville ... Appalachians ... Adjacent to Appalachian North Carolina.
"Anyone else notice what a bad dresser Zuckerberg is?"
Hey, that was my look during Reagan's first term. (Skinnier necktie, though.)
Come to think of it, that was pretty much my look during Reagan's second term, the first Bush, and all of Clinton.
"Truth said...
""Very few engineers will ever do as well financially as an AA-hire public school superintendent who can make a quarter-mil a year and retire early on a six digit pension with 100% free, 100% coverage health-care for life.""
Yeah, and there are so many of those nowadays."
When you factor in their their lackeys and their mistresses.......yeah, there are alot of them sucking on the public teat.
"Shouldn't you be out somewhere with a group of 5 or 10 scowling undergrads holding a Trayvon sign and whining about injustice?"
Hey; I had my guns ready and was looking forward to doing some of that lootin' and shootin' you guys promised was going to tear the nation apart after the verdict was announced but their is one thing I did not take in to consideration...
You're imbeciles.
http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-07-10/news/hl-mencken-club/full/
Gottfried gets a mention in the VV.
I'm increasing moving towards the idea that social egalitarianism and cultural marxism are merely useful smokes screens for the economic right.
Sure the masses may be a bit lazy and decadent thanks to modern technology, but this doesn't excuse the fact that people at the top are making too much money for doing too little. The royalties paid to aging rock stars for example, are pretty outrageous when you analyse it.
Whatever happens politically, the rich just seem to keep getting richer.
For a look at a $250K house in Knoxville, scroll down in this story Temper tantrum wife's mother says her 'shattered' daughter has been 'betrayed' by husband who posted humiliating YouTube video of her meltdown ... Knoxville ... Appalachians ... Adjacent to Appalachian North Carolina.
That whole area is prole, isn't it?
http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-07-10/news/hl-mencken-club/full/
Gottfried gets a mention in the VV.
"But, [Potok] adds quickly, "I'm not saying Paul Gottfried's going to go out and start murdering cops. I think that's very unlikely.""
"You're imbeciles."
Black people are being cleansed from New York, LA and DC but the media have got them marching up and down over Sanford, Florida.
Who're the imbeciles?
I understand that he's a genius and all for inventing a message board but WTF ?
STOLE!!!
He stole everything.
And then he wasn't satisfied with just stealing it - he had to break back into their servers and sabotage their system.
And then he lied through his teeth on every contract he ever signed.
The guy is a god-damned megalomaniacal sociopath.
PS: And what did they do about it?
They went to Mr Russia Project looking for succor.
FOOLS!!!
The Scots-Irish were determined to seize [what would become] Facebook, and nothing but nothing was going to stand in their way.
Oh, yeah, the World. When the World is too much with me, I sing Old Hundred (Doxology) to myself, out loud. I find it strangely soothing.
Zuckerberg's $100 million gift, made, iirc, at Facebook's IPO price (which is still higher than Facebook's current share price) is far less than 1% of his wealth, and was made just as The Social Network was being released.
The sad fact is that there are genuine middle class schools that still struggle to find talented teachers and where $100 million could make a real difference, but it won't make a difference in Newark.
This obsession with improving the schools at the very bottom is ridiculous, because the reason they're at the bottom has nothing to do with bad teachers - it's because of students with little native talent or motivation.
Assume the top 40% of US high school students eventually graduate from college. If you want 50% to graduate from college, where do you go - to the bottom 20% or so, or to students in the 50th-60th percentile? The latter, of course. Those students aren't rotting in inner city schools, but in suburban schools where better teachers might make enough difference to nudge them over the top, if that's even possible. I went to a high school that was upper middle class, but our comp sci teachers were appallingly bad. Why teach computer science when you can go into the private sector and make three times as much?
A few decent comp sci teachers and you would get more programmers out of a single suburban, middle class high school than out of the entire Newark school system.
Off topic.
Ed West is blogging again, this time at the Spectator:
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/author/edwest/
I wonder why he wants to import so many people? His company is not that big. The most he could hire would be around 2000-4000.
I could see why walmart or BofA would want to open the flood gates since their employee head count is in the millions. But FaceBook? They only have 5000 employees.
Forgive my ignorance, but why exactly does a company that makes generic "personal" social networking sites need so many science engineers? I figure most of the profit is tied to ad revenue, so most of the engineers he needs are marketing "engineers ". It's not like they're a hardware or software company. Isn't Facebook nothing but Friendster with the hype that MySpace use to have?
"Black people are being cleansed from New York, LA and DC but the media have got them marching up and down over Sanford, Florida."
Who's being "cleansed?" Jews were "cleansed" in Poland 70 years ago, in this country, the rule is; "you want to decide where you want to live, make more money."
[Comment retraction] It occurs to me that my comment submitted 20 minutes ago dismissing Z's "sheer strong juju" because I felt only "resentment and hatred" could reflect badly on your other commenters, and was written in a spirit I do not want to indulge. I request that you not publish it.
""Very few engineers will ever do as well financially as an AA-hire public school superintendent who can make a quarter-mil a year and retire early on a six digit pension with 100% free, 100% coverage health-care for life.""
That's one of those "who you know not what you know" kind of jobs. If you choose your college major with the idea of becoming one of those, the odds are very slim you are going to make it. More likely you'll be stuck in some low-paying crap social services job. Most people realize that the odds of a decent career are much better in engineering.
"Unambitious Loser With Happy, Fulfilling Life Still Lives In Hometown"
http://www.theonion.com/articles/unambitious-loser-with-happy-fulfilling-life-still,33233/
http://youtu.be/AfVENwfeGHw
Does the Border Fence work?
"I wonder why he wants to import so many people? His company is not that big. The most he could hire would be around 2000-4000."
If he was genuinely talking about top-flight developers then far fewer than that, more like 200-400max.
The reality will be they want to destroy the wages of much lower level people like customer service etc.
A few decent comp sci teachers and you would get more programmers out of a single suburban, middle class high school than out of the entire Newark school system.
I'd be shocked if you could get even one single legitimate computer programmer out of the Newark school system.
And not just each year, but ever.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/opinion/the-charitable-industrial-complex.html
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/exclusive-4-5-us-face-near-poverty-no-work-0
More Mexicans sure to solve this problem.
Exclusive: 4 in 5 in US face near-poverty, no work
By HOPE YEN
Jul. 28 8:36 AM EDT
bigstory.ap.org
AP Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta, News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius and AP writer Debra McCown in Buchanan County, Va., contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.
Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor and loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.
The findings come as President Barack Obama tries to renew his administration's emphasis on the economy, saying in recent speeches that his highest priority is to "rebuild ladders of opportunity" and reverse income inequality.
Hardship is particularly on the rise among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy "poor"...
Going back to the 1980s, never have whites been so pessimistic about their futures, according to the General Social Survey, which is conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. Just 45 percent say their family will have a good chance of improving their economic position based on the way things are in America.
The divide is especially evident among those whites who self-identify as working class: 49 percent say they think their children will do better than them, compared with 67 percent of non-whites who consider themselves working class.
Last November, Obama won the votes of just 36 percent of those noncollege whites, the worst performance of any Democratic nominee among that group since 1984.
Some Democratic analysts have urged renewed efforts to bring working-class whites into the political fold, calling them a potential "decisive swing voter group" if minority and youth turnout level off in future elections.
"They don't trust big government, but it doesn't mean they want no government," says Republican pollster Ed Goeas, who agrees that working-class whites will remain an important electoral group. "They feel that politicians are giving attention to other people and not them."
Is This The Recovery Obama (And Jack Lew) Is Talking About?
By Tyler Durden
Created 07/27/2013 - 20:41
zerohedge.com
GRAPHIC: Five Year Growth in Personal Income; Data - St Louis Fed
http://rt.com/shows/the-truthseeker/bill-gates-soros-bloomberg-693/
Population control = Eugenics?
Just to emphasize how bad Newark is: when driving through the city, drivers are advised to not stop at red lights. --Orthodox
Northern Newark, along the subway line and mostly Italian, was a pretty decent if humble place when I visited in the mid-'90s. Ferry St starting near Union Station is heavily Portuguese and was one of those rare places that might earn the term "vibrant", at least in a good way.
Are these zones still the same? Last time I was at Union Station, in 2006, it looked like the Brazilians were being crowded out by Ecuadorians and Colombians.
There's too much Spanish in America already! Keep the squiggles on the vowels, please
Workers Saving Too Little to Retire
March 19, 2013
By KELLY GREENE and VIPAL MONGA
online.wsj.com
Workers and employers in the U.S. are bracing for a retirement crisis, even as the stock market sits near highs and the economy shows signs of improvement.
New data show that powerful financial and demographic forces are combining to squeeze individuals and companies that are trying to save for the future and make their money last.
Fifty-seven percent of U.S. workers surveyed reported less than $25,000 in total household savings and investments excluding their homes, according to a report to be released Tuesday by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Only 49% reported having so little money saved in 2008.
The survey also found that 28% of Americans have no confidence they will have enough money to retire comfortably—the highest level in the study's 23-year history...
Re: facebook has only ~5000 employees, and so can hire only 2-4000:
I don't have the link, but there was a post on hacker news about the hiring culture there - summary, they go through new hires like water.
Does he take us to be zuckers?
In other obfuscatory news,
freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/07/28/tackling-pinkers-defense-of-evolutionary-psychology/
Typical liberal diversionary tactic.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/27/rush-limbaugh-huma-abedin-muslim_n_3664662.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009
Ever notice that whenever liberals or Democrats have some problem or scandal, they try to deflect attention and blame by highlighting what LIMBAUGH THE OUTRAGEOUS MAN said about it.
This way, the focus turns from the Democratic scandal to some 'outrageous or offensive said by Limbaugh'... as if Limbaugh is the real problem than the problem itself.
Liberals are so pathetic. While it is true that Limbaugh is a big fat pig, Wiener did all this to himself, and the Democratic party disgraced itself by supporting and promoting such a creep for so long.
So, instead of facing up to their own failures, liberals turn to something Limbaugh said and use that as a red herring. Whatever Limbaugh said or didn't say, whether it's offensive or not, this is a problem that the liberal side created by harboring a silly man-child like Wiener.
So, liberals need to stop diverting liberal outrage by focusing on some dumb or 'offensive' thing Limbaugh said. The fact is he didn't cause this problem. Wiener caused it, and he is responsible. And Huma Abedin is a fool for marrying such a ugly disgusting jerk and standing by her man when he is no man at all but a lying bastard and egotistical fool.
But it's an old trick of liberals. If they have a problem or controversy on their side, just divert the outrage by highlighting what Limbaugh or some other conservative said about the controversy.
Libs need to stop using Limbaugh as a scapegoat for scandals and problems on their side. Of course, there's always gonna be some idiot on the conservative side who says dumb things about liberal problems, and there's always gonna be some idiot on the liberal side who says dumb things about conservative problem, but this Wiener thing is a Liberal problem, and libs need to deal with it instead of trying to divert attention from the controversy by making Limbaugh out to be the bad guy.
Limbaugh didn't force Huma to marry Wiener, he didn't make Wiener act like a silly pervert, he didn't tell Huma and Wiener to be dishonest and lie about their problems. Wiener and Huma did it to themselves, and Democrats caused this problem by allowing a sociopathic liar like Wiener get so far in politics.
I finished the novel, Netflix is down, and playing guitar is all but impossible in my current condition. Please, come back soon...
Seriously, what can be more important than writing stuff for me to read?
When I am dictator, you shall be first with a pension, enough to afford you cheap labor around your house. Of course, you'll have to quit writing all that crap about Eastern Europeans and short women to stay in my good graces. On second thought, dump away on Eastern Europe. Never liked it all that much.
"We're supposed to believe that the country that tamed the atom"
That's just dumb. It was not indigenous talent that built the bomb.
Global economy. There is no reason why third world people need to live here so that they can program stuff cheaply for us. Last I checked, India has electricity and access to the internet.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4702221768367&set=a.2394695041641.94846.1678912645&type=1
How libs see world.
Lots of material for you here, Steve:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_POVERTY_STRUGGLING_WHITES
Yeah, but in Rosarno, Italy, "800m kilograms of citrus fruit were rotting on the trees"! Maybe some of those billionaires could go there.
http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2010/jan/11/italy-rosarno-violence-immigrants
Newark's regular public school students are super bottom of the barrel, even by inner city school standards. The city is small and it's not that hard for parents to move to one the nearby hundred whatever suburban districts or sneak their kids into them(which thousands do). Good students are siphoned of with scholarships to fancy private schools who want token blacks(tons of these in NJ), Catholic schools, the city's several magnet schools and finally several city and county vocational schools for students who would like to have job someday.
Does any other city in America have a "Malcolm X. Shabazz High School"?
Steve,
And on the lower end of the wage scale......
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/07/farm-robots-to-make-migrant-worker.html
The answer,to quote Paul Simon, is easy if you take it logically:We need a College Corps. A nationwide examination would be sat for,all (white)kids,lets say,15 to 21,being eligible to take it. Those with the requisite score would be offered a place in the Corps. The "cadet" would sign a contract to attend any school he chooses,and major in the needed,uhm,majors. His education would be entirely free! Free, Jerry!! The cost would be borne by A)Federal & state gov,B)The schools C)The high tech industry D)An assessment tax--taxing not income but assets--on all Americans with a certain level of assets E)An amusement tax on all downloads,movies,games etc. The cadet would sign a contract stating that he will study the subject and pass all courses with an acceptable grade. If he fails in any course he will be subject to dismissal. We could have 10,000 students taking STEM courses immediately and Mr. Mark Zuckerbergerer would face some ass kicking lawsuits if he dared not hire them.
BTW fellas,just because Mark ANNOUNCED that he is giving $100 mill to Newark,doesnt mean he HAS given it. There are all kind s of strings attached. And yes it is a 100% waste of money,whatever he gives.
"That's just dumb. It was not indigenous talent that built the bomb."
Yes, actually it was. Built by US companies like Union Carbide and DuPont, under Leslie Graves of the Army Corps of Engineers. Places like Oak Ridge and the TVA, Hanford...
It seems to take a lot of technical infrastructure to build a bomb.
Jesus Christ [no pun intended], Komment Kontrol reared up its ugly head and visited its wrath upon this thread.
I bet that there was upwards of a 50% reject rate.
>Places like Oak Ridge<
The people who worked at Oak Ridge were predominantly northeastern, if current descendents are any indication. Quite a lot of Jews in the mix as well.
It is impossible to believe the local white lumpen had anything significant to do with building the bomb.
The only such guy I know who worked there drove the truck containing nuclear material across town from one location to another. He had a co-pilot. Both were given extensive marksmanship courses and a small arsenal. Their instructions were to shoot to kill anyone who got in their way or purposely attempted to delay them.
He told me:
"I asked my boss, what should we do if we see a car up on the side of the road, and the driver is a-flaggin' us down for a trip to the hospital 'cause his wife or kids is dying?' The answer come right back: 'Make sure you get him between the eyes.' I says I don't want to go to no prison for murder. He tells me, 'How is it murder when it didn't happen?'... I guess I had plumb forgot who owned this town."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2381322/Protestants-creative-Catholics-Jews-dont-adequate-outlet-feelings.html
ROTFL.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/30/hot-u-s-cities-that-offer-both-jobs-and-culture-are-mostly-southern-and-modest-sized.html
"The people who worked at Oak Ridge were predominantly northeastern, if current descendents are any indication. Quite a lot of Jews in the mix as well.
It is impossible to believe the local white lumpen had anything significant to do with building the bomb."
Seventy years later, current Oak Ridge researchers probably are not a good indication. People are mobile in the US these days. Then there's this amusing story:
"The calutrons were initially operated by scientists from Berkeley to remove bugs and achieve a reasonable operating rate. They were then turned over to trained Tennessee Eastman operators who had only a high school education. Nichols compared unit production data, and pointed out to Lawrence that the young "hillbilly" girl operators were outperforming his PhDs."
That's the Lawrence in Lawrence Livermore. Having known two strong senior engineering types who grew up in the TVA area before WWII, I think your "impossible belief" is likely simple prejudice or perhaps a lack of appreciation for how un-regionally concentrated people were at the time by IQ, unlike today.
If you say, well, making the stuff that actually blows up wasn't really significant, it was just the thought that counts, I'll make a counter claim. If the Axis had somehow killed off every scientist involved in the Manhattan project, Groves would have got new ones and still made the bomb.
But what's more, Groves wasn't building a bomb. He was building an entire production system and industry for continuously producing more and better bombs. This system was able to spring into existence because of the depth of US technical industry, in particular in companies such as Dupont and Union Carbide.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-winston-francis-women-gays-20130804,0,7004271.story?facebook
What about the religion problem? In refusing to ordain Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, atheists, Mormons, and Hindus to be Catholic priests, isn't the Church being religiously intolerant and exclusive?
And isn't the very notion of the 'priesthood' exclusive and hierarchical, bestowing a group of people with spiritual authority over others?
For the Catholic Church to be truly progressive, it should abandon Monotheism, embrace New Age world spirituality, pass no judgment on adultery and incest, and end its organized structure of hierarchy that 'privileges' the priesthood over the faithful.
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