I guess my friends and I are getting to that age where some people start to think about switching careers or at least re-examining what they have accomplished (or not accomplished) thus far. As a lot of my friends are in the software industry, I have been talking to a few people about this kind of stuff.

One observation people have made is that the software industry is a young man’s game. By that I mean things are always changing and experience can sometimes be a liability as opposed to an asset. Why would a company hire an expensive engineer from industry when they can train someone straight from school in a couple years? This might be different than, say, law where experience is an asset in terms of learning case law (I am guessing). This is an interesting point. I used to believe this also. But after my past job search, I saw a lot of openings for senior positions. The catch is, you need to be vigilant about building your skills. If you get complacent, suddenly you have the time in the industry but lack the background to get these jobs.

I was talking to someone else about the steep decline in university computer science enrollment and they said it would be stupid to get a CS degree, getting a biotech degree and learning perl would be way more valuable. This kind of took me by surprise, but I think it is common for CS graduates to kind of underestimate the value of their degree. I think a CS degree from a good program is probably one of the best technical degrees a student can get. You can learn programming and scripting languages without a CS degree. But then that’s not the point. Going through a CS program is rigorous. You have to learn a lot of technical stuff but you also need to be rock solid in analysis and algorithmic thinking. I.e., you need to learn how to “think like a computer scientist”. This is an extremely valuable skill. After graduating you should be able to break down and analyze complex systems very well. This serves people well if they progress on to a software engineering position, but is also quite valuable in almost any other profession. Obviously I didn’t go through any other degree curriculums so maybe I am being elitist, but to me this is something fairly unique to CS at least in terms of the “rigorousness”. And for the record, I only got a minor in CS, my degree was in computer engineering.

Finally, people say that a CS degree is being devalued by outsourcing. This is somewhat true. But I was listening to a speaker this weekend who made a good point. Some portion of software engineering will be turned into a commodity that can be offshored. This is inevitable. But building software is fundamentally hard (this is why your computer programs don’t always work), and there will always be a place in the US for people who have the talent to go above and beyond. This was also somewhat confirmed during my last job search. Around 2001 when outsourcing started really taking off, I thought all the jobs would be gone within a decade. Now I think a lot of the cookie cutter positions will be gone, but a lot of cutting edge stuff will still be here in the US and especially the bay area. This comes back to being vigilant about building your skills. Even if you are talented, if you don’t build your skills beyond a basic position, when that job is off-shored, you are need to have the skills to get a more challenging position. Otherwise you will be compensated based on your limited skill-set, even if your talent would permit you to do more.

as far as the decline in CS enrollment, anecdotally I have heard it is well off the peak in 2000, as much as 50%. This makes sense, it is no longer a “sure thing” field due to outsourcing. Things will be tougher for the average software engineer, but for the people with skills I think things will be good just because a good software engineer can create a lot of value for a company. But I am probably biased.

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I am still struggling with muni (SF bus system) during my commute. To recap, I take muni (bus) to the caltrain (commuter train) station in san francisco. then i take caltrain home (the station is 3 blocks from my apartment). The basic problem is muni is an imprecise system while caltrain is a precise system. since the san francisco station is the end of the caltrain line, southbound trains leave exactly on time (to the minute) every day. but muni does not run according to the published schedule, instead running at varying times. For most uses that’s ok, it still runs every 10 minutes or so. But when you have to be somewhere at 5:20 or 6:27 exactly, it becomes an issue. I guess I could go ahead and start biking, but I paid for muni through the end of the month so I am sticking with it til then.

Also the people on muni (and caltrain) kind of annoy me. If you are waiting there, when the bus or train starts coming, people just start to walk in front of you, even if you were there first. Everyone is waiting for the same train/bus so there are no illusions. In fact, one of my friends told me this happened to him while catching the train, and he had to take the next one because the bike car filled up with the line-cutters. I think driving commute analogue is slow drivers in the left hand lane.

Plus on the ride home, it’s packed. This doesn’t really bother me. But people still ring the stop requested bell. It’s so dumb. The muni is going to make every stop regardless. There are usually people at each stop and even if there aren’t, the driver is going to stop because it’s so packed that someone might not be able to reach the cord. Even worse, people ring it for the caltrain stop even though it’s the end of the line. I think this is like people who forget to turn off their turn blinker.

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Jose’s comment below got me thinking, is it really the US/west’s responsibility to come in and stop the genocide in rwanda? Especially in terms of what is happening right now in iraq with regards to ethnic strife. Rwanda might not have turned into quite the quagmire (say that 5 times fast) that iraq has because they are not as well armed, but to me you have the same problems there: invading/occupying and potentially getting into the middle of a civil war. Also according to wikipedia, when the US did try to drop in supplies, it had the reverse effect and more people died in a mad rush for the goods.

The movie kind of says with shame that the US backed off due to Somalia, but wasn’t that a lesson learned? If there is no history of democracy or rule of law in the region then occupying that region will likely lead to more than the US can handle? Compound that effect with a fractured public divided along ethnic lines.

Of course what happened in Rwanda is a tragedy, and things get hard when you start trying to figure out how much the US should spend in dollars and lives to save people in other countries. Maybe the situation in Rwanda would have been more teneble than Iraq, but nowadays what percentage of news coverage is about Saddam’s past crimes against humanity and what percentage is dedicated to continued unrest? Would Rwanda have been any different?

Of course if the celebrity adoption trend continues, soon there won’t be any people left in africa anyways.

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i haven’t posted for awhile, due to a confluence of several factors:
1. My internet connection went out this week.
2. I tried to get up early this week (6AM) so I could start working out during the work-week. So I was pretty tired by the time I got home.
3. Maybe complacency has set it since making it to #1 on google for kireet search.

Anyways, I watched Hotel Rwanda this week. I have had it at home from netflix for awhile. I was a little hesitant about watching it because everyone who has watched it said it was good but very depressing. Overall I thought it was pretty good but not great. Unlike Schindler’s List (the movie it is often compared to), almost all the character’s in Hotel Rwanda are one-dimensional. This may be on purpose, the main star in the movie is the genocide itself. And the performances in the movie are pretty good. I have always thought Don Cheadle was underrated. And it was good they toned down the violence in the movie so they could still get a PG-13 rating.

also for work i may have to go to wichita kansas. any suggestions?

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interesting comments about nose runs below. seems like there’s more than meets the eye there. i wonder if we could determine the temperature where your nose doesn’t run, i.e., the condensation effect doesn’t overcome the freezing temperature. Or would all the snot run out of your nose and freeze on your upper lip? Inquiring minds want to know. And can we draw a corollary to nasal conditions in desert-like conditions? Is everyone in Phoenix clogged up all day?

also, just saw this on reddit.

i don’t read this guy very often but he does have a few gems, including the kids’ drawing critiques.

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The new job is going ok, I am getting used to commuting, it is a little over an hour each way. I take the train and then a short bus ride to work. It’s not too bad, I can get some reading done on the train. My main problem right now is taking the bus back. It’s hard to time when to leave exactly right. If I miss the bus, I miss the train. If I leave too early, too much downtime. I may try taking my bike when it gets warmer, it may not be much quicker but I will be able to time my commute much better.

all this walking around in the winter got me thinking, why does your nose run when it gets cold? Shouldn’t your snot freeze up instead? Why doesn’t it run in the summer?

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