Ellen Pao Probably Needs a Hug

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Nobody deserves this. The mud-slinging on Reddit speaks greater volumes about the difficulty of Pao’s job than her competency at it.

I think everyone should have the media perform a hatchet job on them at least once. You get this horrible helpless feeling when you know you’re trying to be honest and do the right thing, but you see how easy it is for a journalist to cast everything you do as corrupt and destructive. And how quick everyone is to believe them. And how attempts to set the record straight are met with further attacks and greater outrage. And the smallest piece of dirt snowballs until it gets to the point where it doesn’t even matter what the accusation is or whether it makes sense.

Ellen Pao joined Reddit in 2013. She became interim CEO at the end of last year when Yishan Wong abruptly resigned. Last week, Reddit admin Victoria Taylor was fired, igniting a #RedditRevolt. Ellen Pao didn’t do that. That was the work of Executive Chair and co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who detachedly pulled out the popcorn as riots erupted.

kn0thing is the username of co-founder Alexis Ohanian
kn0thing is the username of co-founder Alexis Ohanian

To be fair, Ellen Pao was the CEO, even if only for a few months. And Pao had already made herself into a controversial figure with the Kleiner Perkins lawsuit. But Ohanian didn’t suffer any death threats or rape threats or Nazi allegations. Nor did he receive images of his face photoshopped onto porn.

Public scandals are fairly predictable. People express outrage because they’re afraid of losing social status. Call it herd mentality. As long as the masses express outrage at the current public enemy, they maintain status. Great work Redditors, you successfully asserted your social superiority over Ellen Pao.

By next week, the media will have a fresh whipping boy to hate on, Ellen Pao will have dropped from public consciousness, and Redditors will go back to making fun of fat people and minorities. This too shall pass.

And to Alexis Ohanian: Fuck you.

The Difference Between Computer Scientists, Programmers, Software Engineers, and Developers

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Computer Programmer

Manager: Build me a New York Stock Exchange.

Programmer: I don’t know how to do that.

M: Build me a continuous rule-based order matching system that generates trades using bids and asks ranked by price-time priority.

P: Could you be more specific?

M: Write me a function that receives two arrays of objects. The objects are sorted by price, one ascending and one descending. Each object is associated with a quantity field. Iterate through both arrays in parallel, returning a list of matches where the object in the ascending array has a price that is greater than or equal to the price of the object in the descending array. As matches are found, decrease the quantity fields accordingly and remove objects when the quantity reaches zero.

P: Yes boss.

Software Developer

Manager: Write me a function…

Developer: Piss off, I’m not your bitch.

(Developers often have entitlement issues, particularly in Silicon Valley.)

M: This company would be much obliged if you could apply a modicum of your immense talent to building a matching engine for a stock exchange. At your leisure, of course. I understand that the office ping pong tournament takes priority over this task.

D: Sure, I’ll whip something up after my afternoon nap.

It is also important to note that software developers do not being like being called developers, because that term does not encapsulate the grandeur of their skill. They need job titles like Javascript Ninja or Objective-C Samurai or Python #MinisterOfAwesome. You get the idea.

Computer Scientist

Manager: Build me a continuous rule-based order matching system for a sequence of bids and asks.

Computer Scientist: I don’t actually know how to code, but I propose you use a deferred-acceptance algorithm, which would perform the matching function in O(n2) time.

M: Thanks, that was incredibly useless.

I supposedly have a degree in Computer Science, but I’m still not sure what it is these people do for, like, work.

Software Engineer

Manager: Build me a matching engine.

Software Engineer: Sure. Let’s target an internal order-processing latency of 500 nanoseconds with a throughput of two million messages per second.

A software engineer will ostensibly accomplish the same goals as a software developer, but a system built by an engineer is less likely to be improperly configured after an update and cause a stock exchange to shut down for three and a half hours.

Disclosure: My current job title is Senior Software Engineer. My code is so sloppy that I should probably be called a Developer. Oh wait, no, I should be called, um, Java Jujitsu Master. Something like that.

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The Evolution of the Stock Market

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Complex? Nahhh… kids can trade from a friggin watch these days. Shouting orders from the curb back in the day, now that was complex…

Reference:
This Chart Shows How Complex the U.S. Stock Market Has Become

No Country for STEM Majors

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In 2012, Microsoft launched an initiative for immigration reform to address the domestic STEM shortage. The company claimed to have 3,400 unfilled engineering positions. America isn’t producing enough engineering graduates, they said.

Microsoft was quickly joined by a coalition of 20 other organizations. Silicon Valley tech leaders joined hands to form FWD.us for immigration reform.

Less than two years later, Microsoft laid off 18,000 of its employees. So much for those unfilled engineering positions.

The talent shortage hype remains. Kids are piling into 4-year STEM degrees. They leave with the ability to architect computer systems and optimize algorithms. But companies don’t need that en masse.

What employers really want are programmers. Not software engineers, not computer scientists. Low-level coders who can translate a checklist of product specs into a computer program.

Most engineers—and their software counterparts—still have their expertise in their fifties and sixties. But employers see no need to encourage longer periods of employment, since each year cheaper graduates, both American and foreign, arrive with their résumés.

What they’ll do as they reach, say, thirty-five years old is not the concern of an economy based on revolving cubicles, marginal salaries, and importing acquiescent labor.

America doesn’t have a STEM shortage, America has a programmer shortage. The assembly-line worker of the 21st century.

In The NY Review of Books, Andrew Hacker says that the average H-1B worker salary is only 57% the amount paid to Americans with comparable credentials. Tech companies can get immigrant workers at a 43% discount because, what else are these H-1B employees gonna do? Go back to India?

Engineering also illustrates how the economy mishandles the talent it has. At current rates, our universities will be awarding about 760,000 engineering degrees in the decade ahead. But that is over five times what the [Bureau of Labor Statistics] projects for the profession’s growth.

So go ahead and major in journalism or anthropology, kids. Or turn your engineering degree into a career as an overqualified line cook. You’re hosed no matter what.

See Also:
The Frenzy About High-Tech Talent –NY Review of Books

Public Tech Company Valuations are also Bullshit

Most tech companies don’t take stock options into account when calculating employee compensation expenses. Therefore the earnings numbers they publicize are bullshit.

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Amazon (AMZN)’s P/E ratio, when calculated using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) is 1192.9. That’s twice as high as any other large-cap stock out there.

Notable exceptions in the tech world include Microsoft (MSFT), Intel (INTC), and Apple (AAPL), which report only GAAP earnings.

See Also:
How Much Do Silicon Valley Firms Really Earn? –Barrons (if you have trouble viewing the page, try grappling hook)