worker-guy rant...

[Don Y]

On 6/10/2023 2:18 PM, bitrex wrote:

Nah but if you want more people to get educated towards entering a given field,
and there\'s a dearth of employees and an urgent need for the work, then Econ
101 says once the pay goes up commensurate to the need people will show up to
do it.

This is the perennial \"we-need-more-guest-workers-cuz-we-can\'t-find-people-to-
do-these-jobs\" (so, lets rewrite child labor laws to solve the problem!
After all, we VALUE FAMILIES -- even if they end up suffering injuries
or forfeiting their childhoods!!)

\"CTE, and skilled trade professions, need a public relations makeover and a
champion. \"

Shouldn\'t the market adjust? IMO money is an easy sell, shouldn\'t need a PR
campaign to get people interested in money.

Perception too often drives reality. I\'m sure dairy farmers THOUGHT that
they had to (conspire to) keep costs down to keep their products affordable.
But, lo and behold, when something affected the entire industry AND THEIR
COMPETITORS SIMILARLY FACED INCREASED COSTS, the market still managed to
exist -- albeit with some likely changes.

Is a sheepskin from X \"worth more\" than one from Y? Will it command a higher
pay (or level of respect/responsibility)? Who wants to roll those dice
given that the results will likely be severely decoupled from the decision
(and likely costly to reverse)?

\"Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM...\"

 

[Don Y]

On 6/10/2023 2:43 PM, Dean Hoffman wrote:

A farm equipment dealer here in Nebraska offers a two year school program including
room and board. The recruit is supposed to work for the dealer for five years.
https://landmark.careers/student-tech-program/

Part of the appeal of Apprenticeships, in The trades, is to get an idea
of whether you\'d like to hire that person as a regular employee. What
better \"test\" than watching their performance, on-the-job (even if,
admittedly, in a junior role)?

But, now you have a different problem to manage: what if you stumble upon
a really stellar applicant -- and are on-the-hook to hire this other
\"student\"? I\'m sure the student took the aid not just for it\'s immediate
value (offset education cost) but for the promise of employment that would
follow (\"I won\'t have to worry about a job for 5 years!\")

 

[Don Y]

On 6/10/2023 2:56 PM, Ralph Mowery wrote:

Due to that around here a man will work for the big car dealers long
enough to get good at repairing the cars. If he is very good ,he opens
up his own shop. The car dealers would be better off paying the better
ones a higher wage.

That\'s true in many industries -- esp those with a relatively low
\"investment/startup cost\".

It makes you think, hard, about hiring firms that, in turn, hire
workers: how good are the workers if they are still *employees*?
why can\'t they make it on their own?

There\'s more to \"selling labor/services\" than just the know-how.
You also have to have the discipline to be reliable, responsible,
safe, available, etc. You can walk away from a *job* but not
a *contract*!

I\'ve got a buddy who is a STELLAR engineer! His designs are
amazingly innovative and inexpensive to produce/maintain.

But, getting him to actually *do* the work on a schedule is
like pulling teeth! Give him 6 months for a task -- and he\'ll
start on it the week before it\'s due. Then, the result will
appear \"rushed\" with little details omitted, etc.

So, you have to plan on a period of \"cleanup\", after the due date.

Several of us rely on his services. And, know of his perpetual
procrastination. So, we informally kabitz about the various
commitments he\'s made to each of us -- so we don\'t aim to
get a result from him when we know he\'s going to be \"cramming\".

*HE* needs a manager -- if only to keep him scheduled correctly.
But, bristles at the thought of a boss!

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 10 Jun 2023 18:30:40 -0700, Don Y
<blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

On 6/10/2023 1:32 AM, Wanderer wrote:
While I agree with you that our education system does a lousy job of helping
people find their place in the world, where they can earn a living and build
a life for themselves. And I agree with you that the meritocracy devalues
skills compared to knowledge, even though skills can be harder to obtain and
more useful in the long run than knowledge. But skills can become obsolete
very quickly.

Witness the \"why-can\'t-we-go-back-to-our-respected-positions-from-the-50\'s\"
crowd. Look at how much has changed in YOUR lifetime (in terms of skills).

When was the last time you saw a \"secretary\" given a typing test? Or,
steno? Or, 10-key?

Early in th PC era, one expert said \"you will never get a businessman
to type.\"

When I was younger, I had to know how to operate a keypunch just to get my
code into the mainframe. When was the last time I needed a job control card?
Or, to draw a flowchart? Petri net?

Wirewrap a design? Solder? Prototype (to test/verify a design)? Tape
a layout?

I still breadboard to test parts or simple circuits. Many parts aren\'t
specified or modeled enough to trust simulation.

Nest week I need to blow up a bunch of solid-state relays. SSRs never
have SOAR graphs. With a bit of luck and some tricks, *almost* blowing
them up might do.

All of these are easily replaced with technological advances. And, yield
more consistent results. Fewer people doing/supervising more \"output\".

I got my start in engineering as a PCB designer on computer,
while there were still drafters working by hand to maintain existing
designs. I would use these scanning tables to convert hand drawn schematics
into computerized ones, slowly putting people out of work. What happens to
your PCB designers when they get replaced by AI?

They go away.

What happens to your PCB *fab* when someone offshore can do the job
quicker, faster and without requiring all that floorspace/staff?

Layout, so far, is driven by simple rules with easily codified
criteria: minimize total run length, etc. AIs will look at
\"successful\" layouts and deduce the common threads in them.
Your \"PCB guy\" will simply be there to catch instances where
it \"went wrong\" and give it direction as to how the layout needs
to change.

PCB layout is rarely driven by simple rules, especially for fast or
high-power-density products. I don\'t know how I could communicate all
the requirements to AI, even if decent AI existed. I can\'t even
communicate all the issues to my PC layout guy. I do the critical bits
myself.

He likely won\'t be able to *ask* the AI why it made a particular
\"mistake\" and get an answer that he can make sense of.

Or, he will have to develop yet another (obsolescent) *skill*
trying to understand the AIs quirks. (which won\'t be portable to
some other AI or one trained on a different style of boards)

What do you do when your tech support staff is replaced by an
AI (that can handle many transactions concurrently) -- because it
has \"watched\" past interactions and sorted out how those were
ULTIMATELY resolved (ignoring all of the needless gyrations that
may have been recommended by the human staff grasping at straws).

Accountants? Facility managers?

My personal favorite: TV talking heads! (the AI writes the copy AND
animates the avatar!)

That\'s easier.

 

[Jasen Betts]

On 2023-06-11, Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

Why do we have \"school teams\" (football, basketball, baseball, *golf*?!, etc.)?
How many of those folks will ever USE those skills AFTER HS?

Vanity mainly, but some of them pay for college that way, some may even
make it a career. Also it teaches cooperation.

--
Jasen.
🇺🇦 Слава Україні

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Sat, 10 Jun 2023 11:08:42 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Fred Bloggs
<bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote in
<274a6302-7461-42c2-bec2-53c1ed34de7en@googlegroups.com>:

On Saturday, June 10, 2023 at 12:10:20 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
https://amgreatness.com/2023/06/05/mike-rowe-is-on-a-mission-to-reverse-t=
he-unspeakable-stupidity-of-devaluing-work/

He\'s right. Not everybody can play the college-essay game, and we
don\'t need millions of artists and sociologists and film-makers
surviving as Uber drivers and baristas.

\"America is lending money it doesn\'t have to kids who can’t pay i=
t
back to train them for jobs that no longer exist. That’s nuts.\"=


We do need more electronics and manufacturing techs, more good HVAC
and auto mechanics, more good IT support people, more good PCB layout
people.

Have you ever attended any kind of vocational training? It\'s unbearably mor=
onic, and that\'s not to say most college undergraduate course work is not t=
he same way. Rowe is too stupid to understand he\'s talking about maybe the =
1% who will end up being any good- and then only after they\'ve aged a bit t=
o emerge from their arrested emotional development, if ever. That makes the=
training infrastructure about 100x more expensive than he thinks, and it\'s=
all being put on the taxpayer. If you\'re determined to flush money down th=
e drain, it\'s better if people do that with their money.

What we need is basic understanding.
My second job: (after designing for army navy and power stations sort of stuff): I applied
for a job in broadcasting (TV was my hobby anyways and I already had designed and build my own TV camera).
That got me the job, 6 month in the school banks followed by an exam and a contract to stay for a few years
All payed for..
Its a wide field, electronics in broadcasting, and constantly changes,
Now its all digital, in those days the sixties we even still had some tube equipment in use.,
It involved much more than just electronics, from politics, management (running the technical part of a studio)
to how to handle people in a fire etc.., fault finding, repairs, the show must go on.
So we got lessons from experts in many different fields, audio, video, satellite, security, management
I enjoyed all that and still use knowledge gained.
There is more than just making a peeseebee, peeseebees I have made since I was a kid, etching those at home..
But designing the circuits comes first.. and to know what to design you have to know what is needed,
what is possible.
When very young (9 years ? or so), I already soldered things together to make radios...
I had the book \'Zo werkt de radio\' (that is how radio works) by Van Aisberg from the library..
https://www.deslegte.com/zo-werkt-de-radio-381461/
super heterodyne was simple to me.
Many could not even read at that age, .. circuits, fun!
It all depends on your interests I guess.
cars, of course I worked on cars, like anybody back then repairing a clutch or gearbox, dirty ...
Motorcycles I had too.... We had a auto club where I worked, access to our own garage and tools.

Am 76 now, still running....
And still learning, interested in many more fields than just \'tronics...
Later - after broadcasting life, travelled the world did many jobs in electronics everywhere from hospitals to space to missiles to what not
Bit of experience everywhere..
If I was born again, with the right info available. I would go for DNA RNA and make my own dino, life.
We are, after all, nothing special, just a slightly more advanced stage of self-assembly
like electrons and protons and neutrons make up our elements that then combine to make all sort of things,
also ever moving .. called life, us, and we making AI etc etc that then makes ?
Its simple, religions and similar groups wanting to control people and mystify things may obscure that.
We, life, are just a natural process happening all over the \'universe\' (what we know of it anyways).
Dogma and religions are our obstacle.
Look and decude, fault finding (what I have done as job much of my life) learn to see...
But the basic understanding of things comes first, I have seen people fail in that that had a very high degree education.
To attain riches has never been my direct goal, that is easy... curiosity is my nature
to understand things.
Chatting with AI is in a way, at least for me do far, playing with it to test where it goes wrong...
But it can be helpful too as it does have access to so much information.

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Sunday, June 11, 2023 at 1:52:49 PM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 10 Jun 2023 18:30:40 -0700, Don Y <blocked...@foo.invalid> wrote:
On 6/10/2023 1:32 AM, Wanderer wrote:

<snip>

> I still breadboard to test parts or simple circuits. Many parts aren\'t specified or modeled enough to trust simulation.

Which is to say John Larkin gets less from data sheets and models than the average engineer.

> Nest week I need to blow up a bunch of solid-state relays. SSRs never have SOAR graphs. With a bit of luck and some tricks, *almost* blowing them up might do.

Pretty much everybody else who buys them doesn\'t need to go to that much trouble.

All of these are easily replaced with technological advances. And, yield more consistent results. Fewer people doing/supervising more \"output\".

I got my start in engineering as a PCB designer on computer, while there were still drafters working by hand to maintain existing designs. I would use these scanning tables to convert hand drawn schematics into computerized ones, slowly putting people out of work. What happens to your PCB designers when they get replaced by AI?

They go away.

What happens to your PCB *fab* when someone offshore can do the job quicker, faster and without requiring all that floorspace/staff?

Layout, so far, is driven by simple rules with easily codified criteria: minimize total run length, etc.

Some of it is.

AIs will look at \"successful\" layouts and deduce the common threads in them.

Your \"PCB guy\" will simply be there to catch instances where it \"went wrong\" and give it direction as to how the layout needs to change.

Minimising cross-talk isn\'t all that easy. You do have to know which traces carry fast-changing voltages and currents.

> PCB layout is rarely driven by simple rules, especially for fast or high-power-density products. I don\'t know how I could communicate all the requirements to AI, even if decent AI existed. I can\'t even communicate all the issues to my PC layout guy.

I didn\'t have much trouble with that. The final layout did take a couple of cycles of inspection and correction, but good layout people got enough of the message that you rarely neede more than two go-arounds.

> I do the critical bits myself.

Once printed circuit layout programs got tolerably user friendly, I did do critical layouts myself, but that was at a point in my career when I was less busy and we didn\'t have all that many layout people.

> >He likely won\'t be able to *ask* the AI why it made a particular \"mistake\" and get an answer that he can make sense of.

It\'s usually pretty obvious.

> >Or, he will have to develop yet another (obsolescent) *skill* trying to understand the AIs quirks. (which won\'t be portable to some other AI or one trained on a different style of boards).

AI isn\'t likely to have access to enough boards to develop any kind of \"style\".

> >What do you do when your tech support staff is replaced by an AI (that can handle many transactions concurrently) -- because it has \"watched\" past interactions and sorted out how those were ULTIMATELY resolved (ignoring all of the needless gyrations that may have been recommended by the human staff grasping at straws).

AI isn\'t likely to be able to understand the past interactions, so it won\'t know enough about what it was \"watching\". That\'s how senior executives break things - they think they know what they are seeing, and will impose the solution that makes sense to them.

> >Accountants? Facility managers?

Accountants famously don\'t know enough about what they are doing. It was always difficult to get them to pay the broad-line distributors on time, so that when we needed a particular part urgently we could get it fast. Get it wrong and you can have an almost working million dollar machine siting in final test, waiting for a ten cent part that you have to fit before you can ship it.

My personal favorite: TV talking heads! (the AI writes the copy AND animates the avatar!).

That\'s easier.

Mainly because there\'s no quality control. It took ages before Tucker Carlson got fired.

Fox News had to agree to pay US$787 million in damages to Dominion for the lies that Tucker Carlson - amongst others - broadcast.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Saturday, June 10, 2023 at 7:34:35 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 10 Jun 2023 11:08:42 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Saturday, June 10, 2023 at 12:10:20?PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
https://amgreatness.com/2023/06/05/mike-rowe-is-on-a-mission-to-reverse-the-unspeakable-stupidity-of-devaluing-work/

He\'s right. Not everybody can play the college-essay game, and we
don\'t need millions of artists and sociologists and film-makers
surviving as Uber drivers and baristas.

\"America is lending money it doesn\'t have to kids who can’t pay it
back to train them for jobs that no longer exist. That’s nuts.\"

We do need more electronics and manufacturing techs, more good HVAC
and auto mechanics, more good IT support people, more good PCB layout
people.

Have you ever attended any kind of vocational training?
I did visit the controls class at Sierra College. They were doing
really cool stuff. The class project was to build a control system
with motors and sensors and stuff. They machined the mechanical parts,
did their own PCB design and layout and assembly, wrote the code.

I bet the average MIT EE grad doesn\'t know how to drill a hole or
solder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIhk9eKOLzQ

The video creator is a sh_t-for-brains low-life.

Get back to us when you find a school with this track record:

https://www.businessinsider.com/compaines-founded-by-mit-grads-2014-8

Hardly a complete or even significant list...

Kind of mind boggling that back in the day, as in 19th century, four year graduates would start a major firm like this with BIG projects:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_%26_Webster

There are hundreds more...and don\'t forget the chief scientist at Ting was an MIT grad too.

https://www.tingfire.com/company-product/electrical-fire-safety-in-the-home-tings-deep-roots/

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 11 Jun 2023 06:43:04 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
<bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, June 10, 2023 at 7:34:35?PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 10 Jun 2023 11:08:42 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Saturday, June 10, 2023 at 12:10:20?PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
https://amgreatness.com/2023/06/05/mike-rowe-is-on-a-mission-to-reverse-the-unspeakable-stupidity-of-devaluing-work/

He\'s right. Not everybody can play the college-essay game, and we
don\'t need millions of artists and sociologists and film-makers
surviving as Uber drivers and baristas.

\"America is lending money it doesn\'t have to kids who can’t pay it
back to train them for jobs that no longer exist. That’s nuts.\"

We do need more electronics and manufacturing techs, more good HVAC
and auto mechanics, more good IT support people, more good PCB layout
people.

Have you ever attended any kind of vocational training?
I did visit the controls class at Sierra College. They were doing
really cool stuff. The class project was to build a control system
with motors and sensors and stuff. They machined the mechanical parts,
did their own PCB design and layout and assembly, wrote the code.

I bet the average MIT EE grad doesn\'t know how to drill a hole or
solder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIhk9eKOLzQ

The video creator is a sh_t-for-brains low-life.

My experience is mostly with UC Berkeley and Stanford EE grads, but
the results are similar. Most of them don\'t understand electicity and
many are afraid of it. Few can coherently explain their senior
project. That\'s a good test, after the 9K:1K voltage divider
challenge: tell me about your senior project.

I did a tour of the Cornell EE department and counted screens. I saw
22 computer monitors and one oscilloscope. Laptops paid for by
students are cheaper than labs with benches and equipment.

 

[bitrex]

On 6/10/2023 4:13 PM, John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 10 Jun 2023 01:32:38, Wanderer<dont@emailme.com> wrote:

While I agree with you that our education system does a lousy job of helping people find their place in the world, where they can earn a living and build a life for themselves. And I agree with you that the meritocracy devalues skills compared to knowledge, even though skills can be harder to obtain and more useful in the long run than knowledge. But skills can become obsolete very quickly. I got my start in engineering as a PCB designer on computer, while there were still drafters working by hand to maintain existing designs.

I kept a few tape-and-mylar examples to show to the kids. I don\'t miss
that at all.

I still sometimes draw schematics on D-size paper and give them to my
layout guy to enter. I enjoy drawing; I have a big wooden drafting
table with a giant window with a view.

I would use these scanning tables to convert hand drawn schematics into computerized ones, slowly putting people out of work. What happens to your PCB designers when they get replaced by AI?

I doubt that AI can do decent PCB layouts. Autorouters are still
pretty bad and auto-place really sucks.

Flux now claims AI capability. Flux.ai. It will be interesting to see
if they survive.


The reason for these over-priced community college degrees is that high school degrees are almost worthless.

There was a guy, used to post here, teaches industrial automation, a
2-year program, at Sierra College. We visited one of his classes. It
was awesome. He said that 100% of his grads get job offers, running
factories and such. One his grads, a girl, runs the gigantic Budweiser
brewery near Sacramento.

All a high school proves is that you achieved minimum basic skills, and then the education is not equivalent among the students. We should end high school after the 10th grade. You\'ve achieved minimum basic skills. Then hand out tuition vouchers for two to four year schools with advanced degrees that will mean something on a resume. And yes we should include skill training but it needs include a general enough knowledge base to last a lifetime. Having the state pay for education up front, allows them to negotiate costs up front instead of dealing with this nonsense of uncontrolled borrowing.
We should get kids into college earlier and get the alcohol off campus. Get kids
into the workforce at a younger age and get more kids to go for advanced degrees.

One reason to go to college is to learn to drink beer. But that\'s not
worth graduating $200K in debt.

But the fact is that most people going to 4 year colleges aren\'t going
200k into debt getting English degrees, anthropology degrees, or degrees
in underwater basket weaving.

You can see what they\'re doing and the liberal arts ranks pretty far
down the list:

<https://www.statista.com/statistics/185334/number-of-bachelors-degrees-by-field-of-research/>

The lure of being \"white collar\" is strong and despite rising interest
rates and a few well-publicized layoffs the white collar world economy
is still roaring, there has rarely been a better time to be in finance,
biomed, business, marketing, accounting, engineering, etc.

It shows in that the housing market in the Boston area is still plenty
hot with people making 700k cash offers on 2 bedroom gutjobs with no
garage 30 miles outside the city. The white collar world has wealth to
burn, it\'s not very many baristas with English degrees making those
offers, or very many auto mechanics, either.

 

[bitrex]

On 6/10/2023 10:13 PM, Don Y wrote:

On 6/10/2023 2:18 PM, bitrex wrote:
Nah but if you want more people to get educated towards entering a
given field, and there\'s a dearth of employees and an urgent need for
the work, then Econ 101 says once the pay goes up commensurate to the
need people will show up to do it.

This is the perennial
\"we-need-more-guest-workers-cuz-we-can\'t-find-people-to-
do-these-jobs\"  (so, lets rewrite child labor laws to solve the problem!
After all, we VALUE FAMILIES -- even if they end up suffering injuries
or forfeiting their childhoods!!)

\"CTE, and skilled trade professions, need a public relations makeover
and a champion. \"

Shouldn\'t the market adjust? IMO money is an easy sell, shouldn\'t need
a PR campaign to get people interested in money.

Perception too often drives reality.  I\'m sure dairy farmers THOUGHT that
they had to (conspire to) keep costs down to keep their products
affordable.
But, lo and behold, when something affected the entire industry AND THEIR
COMPETITORS SIMILARLY FACED INCREASED COSTS, the market still managed to
exist -- albeit with some likely changes.

Is a sheepskin from X \"worth more\" than one from Y?  Will it command a
higher
pay (or level of respect/responsibility)?  Who wants to roll those dice
given that the results will likely be severely decoupled from the decision
(and likely costly to reverse)?

\"Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM...\"

The statistics show that most kids going to college aren\'t going to get
\"useless degrees\", conservatives are living in the past (if it was ever
true.)

4 year college enrollment is down something like 20% over the past
decade with community college enrollment down 40%.

Most of the kids that haven\'t bailed on college already are shooting to
become managers, not baristas with English Lit degrees. That\'s an
understandable decision, being a manager has rarely paid better or
required less work.

 

[bitrex]

On 6/10/2023 7:47 PM, John Larkin wrote:

Nah but if you want more people to get educated towards entering a given
field, and there\'s a dearth of employees and an urgent need for the
work, then Econ 101 says once the pay goes up commensurate to the need
people will show up to do it.

Any time you fight supply and demand, it fights back.

Yeah, like dieting. Better to just stay fat.

\"CTE, and skilled trade professions, need a public relations makeover
and a champion. \"

Shouldn\'t the market adjust? IMO money is an easy sell, shouldn\'t need a
PR campaign to get people interested in money.

Mexican construction guys and house cleaners can make $100 an hour
here.

The media tends to pick the biggest idiots they can find to run a story
on to represent whatever generation they\'re trying to slur, Gen Z I
guess in the case of recent grads. \"I spent 500k on my two anthropology
degrees and have four kids by four baby daddies, how will I ever get out
of debt?! Help me Biden!\" will serve to get clicks but isn\'t the reality
of most college grads, as you can see from the stats.

Something like 50% of college debt is held by PhD grads, it\'s hard to
get too riled up over the fate of their debt repayment they chose that
life, and almost nobody I know of who didn\'t have parents with a good
chunk of scratch, and/or a spare family home to fall back on, backing up
their decision, went into academia.

 

[Don Y]

On 6/11/2023 7:39 AM, bitrex wrote:

But the fact is that most people going to 4 year colleges aren\'t going 200k
into debt getting English degrees, anthropology degrees, or degrees in
underwater basket weaving.

You can see what they\'re doing and the liberal arts ranks pretty far down the
list:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/185334/number-of-bachelors-degrees-by-field-of-research/

NUMBER of degrees says nothing about the cost (or value) of those degrees.

Going into business doing \"landscaping\" work, here, is roughly a $75-100K
income level -- with little more than a pickup truck as your \"investment\"
(and that can be written off as a business expense).

Working *as* a landscaper drops that to the $15K ballpark.

No degree (or trade school!) required.

But, you need to be willing (and able) to work outdoors all the time
(very few indoor opportunities for landscapers).

Folks spending stupid amounts of money on degrees (or \"training\") are
in need of better counseling. Do you blame the *business* that willingly
lets you buy a useless item? Or, do you blame the friends and family members
who SHOULD have the individual\'s best interest at heart?

[I\'ve had friends/neighbors often ask me to talk to their kids about their
curriculum choices and career plans -- I guess I\'m seen as more \"relatable\"
than Mom/Dad (who OBVIOUSLY have some ulterior motive to interfere with their
\"happiness\")]

The lure of being \"white collar\" is strong and despite rising interest rates
and a few well-publicized layoffs the white collar world economy is still
roaring, there has rarely been a better time to be in finance, biomed,
business, marketing, accounting, engineering, etc.

It shows in that the housing market in the Boston area is still plenty hot with
people making 700k cash offers on 2 bedroom gutjobs with no garage 30 miles
outside the city. The white collar world has wealth to burn, it\'s not very many
baristas with English degrees making those offers, or very many auto mechanics,
either.

People pay ridiculous amounts for all sorts of things -- because they convince
themselves that they *have to* have them. (or, let advertisers/society do that
for/TO them) And, willingly accept the notion of \"debt\" as a means of getting
those things (without ever figuring the actual cost).

$5 for a CUP OF COFFEE (to give that barista a JOB)??? <rolls eyes>

 

[Don Y]

On 6/11/2023 8:00 AM, bitrex wrote:

On 6/10/2023 10:13 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 6/10/2023 2:18 PM, bitrex wrote:
Nah but if you want more people to get educated towards entering a given
field, and there\'s a dearth of employees and an urgent need for the work,
then Econ 101 says once the pay goes up commensurate to the need people will
show up to do it.

This is the perennial \"we-need-more-guest-workers-cuz-we-can\'t-find-people-to-
do-these-jobs\"  (so, lets rewrite child labor laws to solve the problem!
After all, we VALUE FAMILIES -- even if they end up suffering injuries
or forfeiting their childhoods!!)

\"CTE, and skilled trade professions, need a public relations makeover and a
champion. \"

Shouldn\'t the market adjust? IMO money is an easy sell, shouldn\'t need a PR
campaign to get people interested in money.

Perception too often drives reality.  I\'m sure dairy farmers THOUGHT that
they had to (conspire to) keep costs down to keep their products affordable.
But, lo and behold, when something affected the entire industry AND THEIR
COMPETITORS SIMILARLY FACED INCREASED COSTS, the market still managed to
exist -- albeit with some likely changes.

Is a sheepskin from X \"worth more\" than one from Y?  Will it command a higher
pay (or level of respect/responsibility)?  Who wants to roll those dice
given that the results will likely be severely decoupled from the decision
(and likely costly to reverse)?

\"Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM...\"

The statistics show that most kids going to college aren\'t going to get
\"useless degrees\", conservatives are living in the past (if it was ever true.)

How does a customer (student) KNOW that the degree he is BUYING from
organization X will have value to justify its cost? When I was going
to school (in beantown), we sat around trying to name as many schools as
possible \"in the area\". ISTR about *50*.

Aside from Tufts, MIT and Harvard, I\'d be hard-pressed to give you an
assessment of their relative merits vs. costs/investments.

Does Wellesley give you a good education? Or, just improve your
chances of landing a successful *man*? Where does BU sit on that
list? BC? etc.

Can you find authoritative costs (factoring in likely financial aid)
for each AFTER you\'ve assessed the values of their degrees?

Look around at the schools that operate out of old supermarkets
and other similar edifices (none of which exude ideas of permanence).

4 year college enrollment is down something like 20% over the past decade with
community college enrollment down 40%.

Most of the kids that haven\'t bailed on college already are shooting to become
managers, not baristas with English Lit degrees. That\'s an understandable
decision, being a manager has rarely paid better or required less work.

Who would WANT to be a manager given the types of people you\'d invariably
have to *manage* (and whose performance would reflect on YOUR job performance)?

Students tend not to understand what \"work\" is about. There\'s no time off
for \"teachers conferences\", summer break, etc. You can\'t decide to skip
a class/exam and hope to make up for it <somehow>. You\'re now an *adult*,
not an overgrown baby.

 

[Don Y]

On 6/11/2023 8:25 AM, Don Y wrote:

Who would WANT to be a manager given the types of people you\'d invariably
have to *manage* (and whose performance would reflect on YOUR job performance)?

(old) Neighbor used to be a manager at Target. And, was proud of this!
(\"I\'m important!\")

We chuckled when we saw him rounding up shopping carts in the parking lot...

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Monday, June 12, 2023 at 1:25:58 AM UTC+10, Don Y wrote:

On 6/11/2023 8:00 AM, bitrex wrote:
On 6/10/2023 10:13 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 6/10/2023 2:18 PM, bitrex wrote:

<snip>

The statistics show that most kids going to college aren\'t going to get
\"useless degrees\", conservatives are living in the past (if it was ever true.)

How does a customer (student) KNOW that the degree he is BUYING from
organization X will have value to justify its cost? When I was going
to school (in beantown), we sat around trying to name as many schools as
possible \"in the area\". ISTR about *50*.

Aside from Tufts, MIT and Harvard, I\'d be hard-pressed to give you an
assessment of their relative merits vs. costs/investments.

And the only means you have of assessing it is to look at the earnings of past graduates.

I did a degree in chemistry as my parents had done before me. They\'d both graduated at the end of the 1930\'s and had both got jobs.

By the time I\'d got my Ph.D, in chemistry in 1970, chemistry was a rather different profession, and I\'d learned quite a bit of electronics in the course of getting my degree, and it wasn\'t the kind of electronics I would have been taught if I set out to get a degree in electronics in 1960.

> Does Wellesley give you a good education? Or, just improve your chances of landing a successful *man*? Where does BU sit on that list? BC? etc.

The answer changes from year to year and from course to course.

> Can you find authoritative costs (factoring in likely financial aid) for each AFTER you\'ve assessed the values of their degrees?

No chance.

> Look around at the schools that operate out of old supermarkets and other similar edifices (none of which exude ideas of permanence).

Knowledge keeps on advancing. Permanence is a very dubious virtue in advanced education.

> > 4 year college enrollment is down something like 20% over the past decade with community college enrollment down 40%.

They have gotten more expensive

Most of the kids that haven\'t bailed on college already are shooting to become
managers, not baristas with English Lit degrees. That\'s an understandable
decision, being a manager has rarely paid better or required less work.

Who would WANT to be a manager given the types of people you\'d invariably
have to *manage* (and whose performance would reflect on YOUR job performance)?

Anybody who hasn\'t spent time being a manager. Being on the next step up the pyramid always looks good - you do get better pay - until you have to do it.

> Students tend not to understand what \"work\" is about. There\'s no time off for \"teachers conferences\", summer break, etc. You can\'t decide to skip a class/exam and hope to make up for it <somehow>. You\'re now an *adult*, not an overgrown baby.

Really? The image at of people at work concentrating 100% from nine to five is unrealistic. I tended to work late because I got regularly distracted during regular hours.
The social interactions are important - that\'s when you find out what is really going on, as opposed to what your managers tell you is going on, and when you sort out the problems that your managers are glossing over, but it is distracting.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[whit3rd]

On Sunday, June 11, 2023 at 10:39:55 AM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:

But the fact is that most people going to 4 year colleges aren\'t going
200k into debt getting English degrees, anthropology degrees, or degrees
in underwater basket weaving.

You can see what they\'re doing and the liberal arts ranks pretty far
down the list:

But the liberal arts is where we get the literati; all the worthwhile writing in
the world (pre-ChatGPT) was honed by the liberal arts coursework, perhaps in the
sidelines of folk doing other degrees. Authors and editors, and video
producers and musicians... our world would be poorer without those
skills that can be implanted in young adults during an academic year,
or written into comprehensible books... to educate generations yet unborn.

Steinmetz, Terman, Shockley, Grove, Horowitz and Hill... they\'re on my bookshelves.

 

[Don Y]

On 6/11/2023 11:45 AM, whit3rd wrote:

On Sunday, June 11, 2023 at 10:39:55 AM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:

But the fact is that most people going to 4 year colleges aren\'t going
200k into debt getting English degrees, anthropology degrees, or degrees
in underwater basket weaving.

You can see what they\'re doing and the liberal arts ranks pretty far
down the list:

But the liberal arts is where we get the literati; all the worthwhile writing in
the world (pre-ChatGPT) was honed by the liberal arts coursework, perhaps in the
sidelines of folk doing other degrees.

That ^^^

There\'s no reason you can\'t have coursework that isn\'t ALL \"hard sciences\".
However, it\'s dubious that there is much practical value of a degree in
\"English Lit\" or \"Philosophy\" -- at least not in large numbers.

[Even fiziks degrees are of limited commercial value]

\"What do you expect to DO with that degree?\"

Authors and editors, and video
producers and musicians... our world would be poorer without those
skills that can be implanted in young adults during an academic year,
or written into comprehensible books... to educate generations yet unborn.

Steinmetz, Terman, Shockley, Grove, Horowitz and Hill... they\'re on my bookshelves.

R Crumb, G Shelton, J Lynch, C Adams, etc.

 

[Les Cargill]

John Larkin wrote:

https://amgreatness.com/2023/06/05/mike-rowe-is-on-a-mission-to-reverse-the-unspeakable-stupidity-of-devaluing-work/

He\'s right. Not everybody can play the college-essay game, and we
don\'t need millions of artists and sociologists and film-makers
surviving as Uber drivers and baristas.

\"America is lending money it doesn\'t have to kids who can’t pay it
back to train them for jobs that no longer exist. That’s nuts.\"

We do need more electronics and manufacturing techs, more good HVAC
and auto mechanics, more good IT support people, more good PCB layout
people.

Most EEs now end up working process at defense contractors as \"systems
engineers\". There are FPGA and hardware people still but that takes
too long and does not survive the contracts process. I submit that a
$10k per unit product is all but officially extinct without a patron.

Here\'s hoping for said patron\'s heart health.

IT support is being utterly hollowed out. I spent most of the week
watching a small ad hoc team trying to get past permissions and
licensing to *get my email working*. Great people pushing some
invisible, variable sized boulder up an imaginary mountain.

But mainly, the dominant force in capitalism now is the merger and
that applies debt to the acquired. It\'s \"technology on the halfsies\". so
the kids do what could be done in a medium sized board as a software
stack on some gigahoochie processor.

I hope there\'s some \"maker\" style ecosystem to support the production of
board layout pros because the number of people who understand even the
basics of a transmission line seem very thin on the ground to me.

M&A is burning the marble of the temples into quicklime to bury the dead.

---------------

Have you noticed that many excellent PCB layout people are dyslexic?
They are great with geometry but bad with words. This shows up as bad
text placement and spelling (PARTS NOT USE) and inattention to
reference designators. That\'s one reason that women are usually better
at PCB layout. Boys are about 3x more likely to be dyslexic than
girls, and things like PCB layout may selectively attract dyslexics.

--
Les Cargill

 

[Don Y]

On 6/16/2023 7:48 PM, Les Cargill wrote:

Most EEs now end up working process at defense contractors as \"systems
engineers\". There are FPGA and hardware people still but that takes
too long and does not survive the contracts process. I submit that a
$10k per unit product is all but officially extinct without a patron.

Here\'s hoping for said patron\'s heart health.

There are still a fair number of products in the 10K *and up* range.
But, their markets are usually far better understood AND the folks
making the decisions are considerably more savvy about *each* decision.

By contrast, the bottom end of the market is full of hand-wavers.

IT support is being utterly hollowed out. I spent most of the week watching a
small ad hoc team trying to get past permissions and licensing to *get my email
working*. Great people pushing some invisible, variable sized boulder up an
imaginary mountain.

(sigh) I have a sad respect for IT folks. There\'s is a thankless job as
the decisions are made by folks who \"count checkboxes\" with little regard
for the costs of supporting each of those boxes checked. Then, cringing
when their (labor) costs skyrocket -- and flail about trying to bring
them back under control (by hiring less and less qualified people).

But mainly, the dominant force in capitalism now is the merger and
that applies debt to the acquired. It\'s \"technology on the halfsies\". so the
kids do what could be done in a medium sized board as a software stack on some
gigahoochie processor.

This always *looks* like the expeditious way to an end. It\'s the
embedded version of \"lets build it around a PC!\" -- without thinking
about what the PC brings to the table that is ESSENTIAL and the
attendant risks.

I can\'t count the number of clients who cringed at the idea of laying out
a custom board -- \"Why can\'t we just buy a __________ and use that?\".
The notion that __________ likely won\'t have the I/Os, packaging constraints,
documentation, etc. that an in-hose design would have escapes them.

\"Can\'t we use Linux?\" Sure! And how many MILLIONS of lines of code do
you think are HIDDEN in that statement? Even at a latent bug per *10,000*
LoC (an order of magnitude better than reality), you\'re looking at thousands
of yet to be discovered (or exploited!) bugs. \"We\'ll just let the Linux
folks maintain that portion of the product FOR us...\" implies you are willing
to update every unit, in the field, as regularly as the kernel sees updates.

And, as this is a burden to the user, design something extra in the product
to support AUTOMATIC updates -- connectivity that your product may neither
need nor want -- and pretend the problem is off your hands. And hope
the user is happy with the decision you\'ve forced on him.

I hope there\'s some \"maker\" style ecosystem to support the production of board
layout pros because the number of people who understand even the
basics of a transmission line seem very thin on the ground to me.

Why would there be? How many folks still make their own woodworking tools?
Skills only have value in the face of need (demand). If you can buy a
ready-made jack plane, why would you want to make one? If you can buy
a ready-made PCB, why would you want to design/make one?

[Sure, there may be A FEW who want to -- out of curiosity -- but it seems
as an obsolescent skill while others are sorting out how to USE those
ready-made items to achieve tangible goals.]

How many folks want to wade through a 1500 page datasheet to figure out
how to *use* a component?

M&A is burning the marble of the temples into quicklime to bury the dead.


---------------

Have you noticed that many excellent PCB layout people are dyslexic?
They are great with geometry but bad with words. This shows up as bad
text placement and spelling (PARTS NOT USE) and inattention to
reference designators. That\'s one reason that women are usually better
at PCB layout. Boys are about 3x more likely to be dyslexic than
girls, and things like PCB layout may selectively attract dyslexics.


--
Les Cargill