Layoffs Taboo, Japan Workers Are Sent to the Boredom Room (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://nytimes.com/2013/08/17/business/global/layoffs-illegal-japan-workers-are-sent-to-the-boredom-room.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0&referer=http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/ <comment><USER2> For a smaller company I can see how this might be a problem, but Sony is a sprawling tech company with tons of divisions. That they're paying 40 people to sit around in a room with nothing to do is simply a failure of management. It's pretty cool that Japan has such a strong social contract, that executives have responsibility to and for their workers. But the social contract isn't the problem there, it's a lack of imagination.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, large companies are going to get more than 5% turnover per year simply from people retiring / dying. If they cut back on hiring they can fairly quickly shrink and retraining is cheap when your willing to let a 50 year old worker sit in a room at full pay.

The real issue is older workers are expensive and companies want a cheap workforce not lower headcount. Society on the other hand benefits when older workers are employed and can't supply unlimited quantities of well trained and cheap workers.

<comment><USER4> If you let attrition drive headcount, you're going to end up with only the people who can't quit and find another job. Seen it happen.

<comment><USER5> Yup, voluntary redundancy was jokingly called the 'muppet retention policy' in a previous job. You announce to your staff that the company has some trouble, and allow all the bright, motivated, and in-demand folks to jump ship with a redundancy package, then you get to soldier on with everyone who's left, but now thoroughly demotivated.

The side effects of labour laws (and, to be clear, I am a big supporter or social / economic justice) can be really difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >In February, just two years shy of Mrs. Sato's retirement, a manager had blunt news: "Your job no longer exists." She refused to quit, and was dispatched to the chase-out room.

Well of course there are going to be problems when you try and lay off someone just a few years before their retirement. I don't see any big cultural differences the article references here. This just sounds like a company trying to rip off their long term workers out of their full retirement package. I'm sure if these retirement packages referenced in the article were anywhere close to what the workers would get on full retirement, of course they would take it rather than going to boredom rooms. The author of this article seems to have simply taken Sonys word that the "retirement packages were generous."

<comment><USER7> They also fail to mention that for many ' lifetime' salary man positions, the hours are really long but the pay is low.

<comment><USER8> 'I heard a great line about this once, and unfortunately I cannot remember the source:

"Most people want to become wealthy so they can consume social status. Japanese employers believe this is inefficient, and simply award social status directly."

The best employees aren't compensated with large option grants or eye popping bonuses — they're simply anointed as "princes", given their pick of projects to work on, receive plum assignments, and get their status acknowledged (in ways great and small) by the other employees.'

From [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in- japan/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/)

<comment><USER9> Really interesting, thanks for sharing.

Does anyone know of any equivalents from other cultures of similar practices?

<comment><USER8> I mean, Chinese society also values social status quite a bit. But nowadays, being wealthy buys social status rather easily in China -- hence the almost gold rush mentality in trying to get wealthy.

I guess what I'm saying is that social status and wealth are two distinguishable things, and in some societies they correlate really well, but in others they don't, and they also have different relative values.

In the US, you can't really buy social status through money directly -- being an anonymous millionaire doesn't get you much more service or adulation than what you're willing to pay for directly.

<comment><USER10> No, you flaunt the markers. Bespoke suit, or super-huge gold jewellery and a L-L-Lamborghini, depending on your clientele.

<comment><USER8> Yeah but that's a big turnoff to a large portion of the American population.

Flaunting wealth -- much more acceptable in China.

<comment><USER10> Got it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is not irrelevant to startups in Japan, either. If you attempt to fire someone who you (unwisely) brought on as a full-time employee, and they contest the firing, you will be brought before a local government functionary to make your case for it.

"They're incompetent at their job." is insufficient grounds for firing. (You need to add "And we spent substantial documented effort retraining them and moving them to other positions, but we have not been able to find one where it worked out.")

<comment><USER12> I have a tiny company (just me and my wife) in Japan and my accountant tells me never to hire a full time employee. What's the startup culture like in terms of hiring? Do people accept contract positions, or do you need to hire them full time?

<comment><USER11> Your accountant gives advice very similar to the advice of my accountant and the accountants of my friends.

Japan has, essentially, a bifurcated employment market [+]. There exist people that accept contract positions; contract positions appear to be widely used within e.g. Tokyo startups. There also exist people who would not countenance a contract position.

One of the key hiring challenges in Japanese startups is finding folks who are both a) productive and b) willing to participate in the half of the labor market that people-the-system-views-as-productive do not normally participate in. (One is not normally afforded huge flexibility in switching between these systems.)

\+ Slightly more fractured than this suggests.

<comment><USER13> There's also the fact that people accepting contract positions are at a significant disadvantage regarding banks if they want to get a loan to buy a house. It's considered lower status to not be a seishain.

But, on the other hand, when it comes to Software Engineering, salaries for contract positions tend to be higher and, in my experience, being a seishain or being a contract worker has no bearing on the competence of the person.

<comment><USER14> As a new (American) grad I briefly looked into working in Japan. The companies I was interested in were posting for Americans specifically, but they were still hiring people on as salarymen. The rates, even COLA-adjusted, were shockingly low. Like, top-flight companies offering bottom 10% salaries in American terms.

That whole experience has come to make way more sense as I've learned about the contractor divide, and the expectation that salaried workers will "start at the bottom".

<comment><USER12> Even at the top end, salaries in Japan are shockingly low AFAICT. Especially if you come out here to the countryside, most programmers are working for insurance companies, etc. I know people with 10 years of experience making in the 3-4 million yen (just over $30-40K USD) range. It's one of the reasons I do remote contracts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Oh, huh. Interesting.

In the first season of Silicon Valley, there's a part where (spoilers) a main character gets "unassigned" from a Google parody, and it's mentioned that it's inspired by some Japanese management technique.

I didn't know that was _actually_ true.

<comment><USER16> This is also what happens to teachers in the New York City school system after they've been caught out reading the newspaper while their students spend all class gambling. They call it the "rubber room".

Technically these teachers are awaiting reassignment, pending arbitration. This is very slow, and I understand that there is a backlog from a long period of time where very little arbitration happened, because the school system was not paying their arbitrators. (Also, they may have decentralized the rubber room in recent years to inhibit visibility.)

<comment><USER17> The article mentions that the practice was discontinued in 2010

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Strong laws that aim to protect labour seem to end up being contra-productive. I've seen it in Germany, for example, where it's pretty difficult to fire full-time employees. Berlin startups therefore either force their workforce to be self-employed, or, routinely hire people with a 6-months probationary period just to fire them the week before.

<comment><USER19> History teaches us what happens without any labour protection, so that's not an option.

But a viable alternative to labour protection is a strong welfare system. That's the classic Denmark vs Germany comparison. Taxes are high in Denmark, but it's easy to hire and fire somebody. Which hurts business more?

<comment><USER20> > History teaches us what happens without any labour protection, so that's not > an option.

What, you become the richest, most powerful country in the world? (I think America has the weakest labour laws in the developed world).

<comment><USER19> America became the richest, most powerful country before any country had substantial labour protections.

<comment><USER21> > America became the richest, most powerful country

More accurately, this happened because every other power was laid to waste by two successive world wars. You'd have been hard pressed to find a standing factory in Germany, Britain, or Russia in June of 1945.

<comment><USER19> The manufacturing output of the US passed Britain to take first place in 1890.

[https://www.quora.com/Economic-History-At-what-point-did- the...](https://www.quora.com/Economic-History-At-what-point-did-the-US- become-the-biggest-economy-in-the-world)

<comment><USER3> Minor nitpick _1916, the year U.S. output overtook that of the entire British empire._ And that was in the middle of WWI. [http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/12/the...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/12/the- real-story-of-how-america-became-an-economic-superpower/384034/)

Further, the US has had several boom and bust cycles people only really hear about 'the great depression' but there have been plenty of major slumps in the US economy for example around the Civil War. So, a nominal lead in good times is not that meaningful.

So it was only during WWII that the US went from near parity to a massive and sustained lead. And it did not take that long before we gave that up to either China or the EU depending on how you want to slice it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a European, I am always amazed to hear about the agility in the US job market. i.e. quitting/getting fired with < a week's notice, being used to a 3-6 month's notice. It's interesting to see that the other extreme also exists.

<comment><USER23> On the flip-side, it's described as a terrible, terrible risk to hire anyone in a European country, because you're signing up for _so_ much responsibility for them. You'd better _really_ need someone before you hire them. You'd better _really_ vet them because getting rid of a bad egg is nigh impossible. (Or so the narrative goes.)

<comment> J-dawg In the UK I sometimes feel like we get the worst of both worlds.

There's a _perception_ that it's nigh impossible to fire someone and that jobs are very secure, which leads to fairly conservative hiring policies and quite low wages (in the tech sector anyway - definitely low relative to contracting here or the equivalent job in the USA).

In reality, jobs really aren't that secure after all. I personally worked for a rather cut-throat small company that fired at least 4 people during the short time I worked there. They'd all worked there for less than a year. I knew all of them personally, and none of them were terrible at their jobs or really deserved to be fired. I'm convinced one of them was fired just because his project came to an end and he was no longer required.

You can't make a claim for unfair dismissal until you've worked somewhere for at least 2 years, so if you're fired before that time you've got very few options legally.

I can't speak about after the 2 years has elapsed because I've got no experience of that. Maybe then it really does become very difficult to fire someone. But people move around more often these days, I'm sure a large percentage of most employers' workforces are under the 2 year mark at any time.

<comment><USER24> IBM and all of their massive "redundancy" layoffs are a clear indication of how easy it is to get rid of people in the UK.

<comment><USER25> > IBM and all of their massive "redundancy" layoffs are a clear indication of > how easy it is to get rid of people in the UK.

No, it's an indication that a massive company with lots of resources is able to cover its legal bases enough that it can lay off large numbers of people in batches. That doesn't mean it's easy by any means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Very similar to the Rubber Rooms in various school districts around the US.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rubber_Room](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rubber_Room)

<comment><USER27> To note though, that's due to the strong unions in unionized school districts, lest anyone think its a regular feature of the American labor market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> With an aging population, how can you simultaneously have too many workers? Or how can you allow such misallocation of workers? These workers have a good 10 to 20 productive years left in them but instead they ate left to while away time rather than have them be productive for another company which is understaffed.

<comment><USER28> _> With an aging population, how can you simultaneously have too many workers?_

Automation.

 _> how can you allow such misallocation of workers?_

Try telling a "sarariman" that from tomorrow he's supposed to be a janitor. "Workers" are people, and over a certain age most people simply don't like change, let alone change _for the worse_. It's not as simple as reallocating bodies.

<comment><USER27> I understand the implications but at the same time simply whiling away time unproductively has to take both a mental and physical toll. The companies are essentially saying "we don't need you/want you, but we're obliged to keep you, even though we'd rather not". How can you even socialize with productive workers who likely see you as a kind of parasite (parasites having currency in Japan as people who mot only don't contribute but take away).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> >Mr. Tani's managers at Sony are already upping the ante. Starting this month, the company has ordered him to work 12-hour shifts on an assembly line at a Sony plant in Toyosato, more than an hour's drive away. He says he will comply.

Now might be a good time to take that 54 month severance pay offer.

</comment><comment><USER29> I would love to be hired by Sony (even on commission) to figure out something valuable for those forty holdouts in the story to do. There is probably something you can do with that talent that is better than having them sit around.

<comment><USER30> Yup it's odd isn't it. I bet more than one of them has an idea for a Sony product or other start up idea, and the rest of them have all the time in the world to develop it -- on full pay, no less. And if they don't have the skills, well they also have plenty of time to learn.

It also sounds to me like a management failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A probably silly question from someone without any understanding of the relevant laws: I'm assuming that it is ok to fire employees when a company goes bankrupt, even when that company is fully owned by another company that is still doing well. Would it be possible to create a new subsidiary for each new employee?

The subsidiary's CEO (only employee) would need to generate revenue as dictated by the company's chairman of the board, which would effectively be the employee's direct manager.

I imagine there would be tons of complications, but wonder whether that could work in theory.

<comment><USER32> This seems like a page right out of Catbert's book of management tricks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Labor regulations are counterproductive because by making firing harder they make hiring harder.

<comment><USER34> I do think it's a balancing act though - we are incredibly lucky in tech where we can have infinite flexibility in what we do. If you are working at Walmart I actually think reasonable protections should be provided.

<comment><USER33> Why?

"Reasonable" protections unduly impose costs on companies and may cause disemployment effects.

Now I know you'll say "companies are evil", but shareholders and banks loan to companies. When companies make profit some people make a profit.

If you have noble goals of helping the poor, a NIT (negative income tax) which transfers money to the poor would be more efficient.

<comment><USER34> Sure, protect the disadvantaged is my only goal - it's definitely worth trying your idea to do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Sounds a bit like what John Sculley did to Steve Jobs.

</comment><comment><USER36> Remember the Rubber Rooms in NYC schools?

</comment><comment><USER37> I feel like I have worked with people in corporate who sought these situations out. A no-work job was their goal, and boy did they work hard trying to achieve it.

<comment><USER38> I've always found it surprising how easy it is to find _yourself_ in a no-work situation like this at a large corporation, without even trying!

Projects will end, people and managers will get shuffled around and suddenly you have no direct work responsibilities for months and months. Sometimes years if you were to let it go on like that.

It is something that sounds great, but if you have any drive at all it will drive you crazy after a month or two. I'd hop on Hacker News only to find all the links were already visited. I would try to learn some new technologies but it didn't have the same impact that learning them out of necessity had.

Eventually you have to sound the alarm to people that you don't have work to do, sometimes repeatedly, before they will 'fix' the problem by assigning you somewhere else.

I honestly think that this is the default state that workers settle into at many large companies. There are some small percentage of highly productive workers doing a ton of work, and a lot of very low productivity workers making up the rest of the ranks.

I've never worked at a startup, but one of the things that I think I would find appealing about them is that there are so few people that everyone's function would be important and that situations like the above would be difficult to go unnoticed.

<comment><USER39> I did this for a Big Co for some months.

In retrospective, it was probably the best time I had in that company. That's how I got back into programming after spending several years "consulting" (sending emails, doing powerpoints and excel spreadsheets, doing meetings, blegh), which was a very good way to get my startup up and running when I was finally laid off.

The only bad part was when someone came looking for "someone unassigned". These were really dull tasks which literally anyone could make, like moving data from paper to spreadsheet.

Or that time when I had to "help" a this guy with a MS Access database that he had been working on for weeks. It was such an atrocious thing. I remember there was a column called "Money". Sometimes it had a number. Others it had a currency name. I redid the whole thing in an afternoon, with Excel. But the guy was someone's son and was impossible to let go.

So they let me go.

The severance package was great, a good safety net for my startup, so it was ok at the end :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I _almost_ automatically closed the tab because it looked like a paywall. Why do I have to click "Show full article" to see the article on the page for that article? O_O

<comment><USER41> Depending on who you ask, it's one or more of:

1) So that the "free articles this month" counter doesn't decrement for stories you don't actually read.

2) So that they get metrics on which articles people actually read vs. loading in a tab and forgetting about.

3) Forcing an interaction manipulates your psychology so that you pay more attention to the page, increasing engagement.</comment></comment>


Geneticists trace humble apple's exotic lineage all the way to the Silk Road - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/aug/15/geneticists-trace-humble-apples-exotic-lineage-all-the-way-to-the-silk-road <comment><USER2> Huh, The Botany of Desire kind of lead me to believe this was already established. Any plant scientists in the house?</comment>


How intelligence, population density, and friendship affect modern happiness - <AUTHOR> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26847844 <comment><USER2> _" More intelligent individuals experience lower life satisfaction with more frequent socialization with friends."_

This is interesting, and certainly strokes the egos of some of us loners. As I've grown older, I've come to recognize that I prefer high-quality, meaningful social interaction to small talk and babbling about banal inanities that makes up the majority of social interaction amongst most people that I've met. If I can't get such high quality social interaction, I'd just rather spend time with myself instead of settling for trivial banter and meaningless amusements. I have many interests, and am quite content to pursue them by myself.

Perhaps some of these "more intelligent individuals" just can't easily get the quality of social interaction they desire. I often feel that the best conversations I've had have been with people who are long dead.. that is, with great authors, through their books. For me, it's difficult to find living human beings who can live up to that standard of conversation. How easy is it to find people who think on the level of Socrates, Plato, or Dostoyevsky (to name just a few who are well known)? After reading their work, ordinary conversation just seems so petty and trivial.

Another factor to consider is that many intelligent people are very driven and focused, often obsessed with their work. They don't have much time for social interaction, and are happier with their work (where they feel they are making a difference), with their art, their education or learning. Compared to that, social interaction can seem like a waste of time.

Finally, there's the question of what counts as social interaction. Does it have to be done in person? Can it be virtual? Does letter writing or participating in an online forum count? How about writing articles or books? The latter has been described as participation in a long coversation with other authors throughout literary history.</comment>


Lester Wunderman, Father of Direct Marketing, Has Died - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/business/lester-wunderman-dead.html <comment><USER2> Not to take away from Wunderman's achievements at all, it seems misleading to refer to him as the "Father of Direct Marketing" and not talk about his predecessors.

Specifically, Claude C. Hopkins is, to my knowledge, the person most responsible for the ideas and techniques behind Direct Marketing. His 1923 book, Scientific Advertising, laid out all the principles of Direct Marketing, and Wunderman would have been very aware of his work. This book predates Wunderman's first job as a copywriter by 24 years, when he was hired by Maxwell Sackheim & Co. in 1947[1].

From the Wikipedia page[2]:

> The book is cited as being the original description of the process of split > testing and of coupon based customer tracking and loyalty schemes. In the > book, Hopkins outlines an advertising approach based on testing and > measuring. In this way losses from unsuccessful ads are kept to a safe level > while gains from profitable ads are multiplied. Or, as Hopkins wrote, the > advertiser is "playing on the safe side of a hundred to one shot".

> The book is widely considered the foundation of direct marketing.

Again, I'm not bashing Wunderman. He was a remarkably effective marketer and if you want to make the argument that he popularized Direct Marketing or did more to make it the juggernaut that it is today, I won't argue.

But it's just disingenuine for this article to give the impression that he's the "father" of it. It'd be like calling Ernest Hemingway the Father of Writing. Hemingway was an amazing writer, worthy of much praise, but it'd be patently ridiculous to claim he fathered the idea of writing good books. Wunderman didn't father Direct Marketing. He was just really, really, ridiculously good at it.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Wunderman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Wunderman) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Advertising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Advertising)

<comment><USER3> According to the article, Wunderman would half agree with you:

> "Direct marketing was out there," Mr. Wunderman told Adweek, referring to > his early days. "I didn't invent it. But it had no definition and no > strategy."

BTW it doesn't change your argument at all but Maxwell wasn't his first job - he worked for two smaller agencies for a while before that. Not 24 years though :)

<comment><USER2> Fair points!

The advertising world's short-term memory is a pet peeve of mine. There's an obsession with "new" and building up individuals as heroes, when it's easy to see that these ideas have been evolving for a long time.

On a somewhat related note, it's also the industry that spends almost all of its money marketing to the demographic who have the least money to spend (debt-burdened youth) and ignoring those with money to burn (retirees).

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER3> I personally specialize in targeting small business owners through FB ads, average age of around 50 :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> His book, Being Direct, is amazing. It's decades of real marketing campaigns, often with detailed test results. It really guided and helped my marketing career.

<comment><USER4> To save others a search, here's the book on Amazon. I'm surprised I've never heard of it before, even though I have Ogilvy & Tested Advertising Methods:

[https://smile.amazon.com/Being-Direct-Making-Advertising- Pay...](https://smile.amazon.com/Being-Direct-Making-Advertising- Pay/dp/0394540638/)

<comment><USER3> For some reason this book misses most of the Best Marketing Books lists and not a lot of people know about it compared to Ogilvy stuff. But having read 100+ marketing books, this is the one I found the most useful.</comment></comment></comment>


Mono 3.2.7 is out - <AUTHOR> http://news.mono-project.com/2014/02/25/mono-3-2-7-is-out/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter <comment><USER2> The lack of benchmarks comparing Mono to the CLR (C# VM) is very frustrating. Apparently, the lack of benchmarks is due to Microsoft's license forbidding the publication of benchmarks without Microsoft's permission (common practice among commercial vendors?).

Fortunately, we have the Benchmarks Game and that shows Mono performing well [on synthetic benchmarks...] when compared to a variety of languages.

vs Java: [http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?t...](http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=csharp&lang2=java&data=u64q)

vs Go: [http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?t...](http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=csharp&lang2=go&data=u64q)

vs Python: [http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?t...](http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=csharp&lang2=python3&data=u64q)

<comment><USER3> Thanks. It took a little while to find, but if anyone is interested in comparing Mono to the CLR for themselves (and likely do some work to adapt the system to Windows), here's where to start: [http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/play.php#languagex](http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/play.php#languagex)

<comment><USER4> The measurements scripts provided on the benchmarks game website are written in Python 2.5+ and worked fine on MS Vista using:

\- Python 2.5+

\- Python Win32 Extensions (for win32 process monitoring)

\- GNU Make for Windows

\- GNU DiffUtils for Windows

Download bencher.zip from:

[https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=100815&release_id=18...](https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=100815&release_id=1876)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> MVC5 still not working tho. Good thing we have Nancy.

Edit: Seems like many do not know about Nancy, check it out, some even say it's better than MVC. The good side is that it's 100% compatible with Mono because they run tests against it too so you can host your C# websites on Linux.

Github: [https://github.com/NancyFx/Nancy](https://github.com/NancyFx/Nancy)

<comment><USER6> First time I've heard of Nancy. Anyone got a URL since it's name is so terrible that you can't google it?

<comment><USER7> I had the same problem. I googled "Mono Nancy" and eventually found this:

[https://github.com/NancyFx/Nancy](https://github.com/NancyFx/Nancy)

EDIT: It seems to be a .NET clone of node.js

<comment><USER6> .NET clone of node.js would be nice, because I like the idea of node.js but not enough to ditch all my .NET stuff (especially entity framework).

<comment><USER8> Entity Framework is really not a good excuse. .NET has lots of great things going for it. Entity Framework is firmly on the "enterprise .NET" list of such items though.

.NET has always been able to do what Node does anyway. It has had HttpListener since v1.0...

<comment><USER9> Think you'll be getting a shock in a couple of years if you think the EF is enterprise. It's changed massively and coding without it is becoming a little like coding javqscript without jQuery.

You can do it, but why bother writing all those crud operations yourself??

Even with complicated SQL you can hand roll it and then tell the EF which class you're.returning and it'll handle all the boring `rs.GetInt(rs.GetOrdinal("ID"))` crap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I tried Mono a few months ago because I was thinking of writing cross-platform (ish) desktop GUI application.

My dev platform is Ubuntu so I downloaded MonoDevelop and load the GtkSharp example (or maybe it was just the skeleton project template). Hit compile, bunch of errors showed up. Apparently I don't have the GTK libraries. Googled a bit, it looks like I had to download gtk-dev, compile, and do a bunch of things before I can run a "Hello, World" GTK sharp app.

I wade through the net and the tutorials and documentations are either for older versions or just weren't there (for example, integrating with NuGet).

It's a bit sad because I'm sure there are tons of engineering effort went into Mono but it just doesn't feel polished enough.

It's open source but lately I felt that it's more of a teaser for Xamarin than anything else.

<comment><USER11> That sounds like the kind of growing pains experienced when you set up any new largish development environment. If we're up and running with ecosystem X, we forget how much work it took to get there, because it was amortized over time. When we start out with a new ecosystem Y, we spend a lot of time in the steep part of the learning curve before reaching Hello World. Java is, IMHO, the worst for this.

Just curious, I've never installed Mono, but my first thought would have been to look for a PPA. Are there none out there? Let someone else figure out the dependencies and configs for you.

<comment><USER12> An IDE should aim to pass a simple UX test which is: after installing the IDE with no prerequisites and no further configuration (no I don't want to create an env var, specify where I keep my compiler or ...), a hello world program should be possible to run straight away.

<comment><USER13> Having the libraries and language installed is not the IDE's job. The IDE is a glorified editor with more stuff.

Eclupse and Idea need Java to be installed for example. And I'd guess VS needs .NET to be installed.

<comment><USER14> > The IDE is a glorified editor with more stuff.

If only more people thought like this then I wouldn't be looked at funny when calling my Emacs an IDE. Instead I have some 90% of PyCharm functionality (+ Org Mode), but I constantly hear that it doesn't count because "I had to configure all these plugins" and so on...

And last time I checked VS installed everything it needed to run by itself - it didn't even ask if I want it IIRC. Dunno about Eclipse.

<comment><USER10> Eclipse and IntelliJ don't come with the compiler, probably due to licensing.

Also keep in mind that VS only works in Windows, not as cross platform as these two. Installing for Single-Family-OS (Windows...) vs different OSes => different complexity.

<comment><USER12> Which is why I think that IDE makers that don't make their language are at a disadvantage (that they should try to work around), and language makers that don't provide an IDE don't take full advantage of their situation. A language/platform without a good dev experience is just not complete. The dev experience is a huge part of what a lang/platform does, and should influence design decisions at every level, i.e. "do we have all the debugging/hot- deploy/profiling entry points in place", or "could this grammar be better for providing autocomplete in invalid synax"?

As for java IDE's: it can't be rocket science to detect & use existing java installations in a good way, or even download & install them in the background (even with licensing issues).

<comment><USER12> > what's the recent version of Java that should be installed?

The latest one? The most common one? The one the IDE requires?

Surely you don't want to use an older one? Even if you deploy to an older target, if you can't do that from a newer one something is wrong. Worse case the IDE could just ask during installation.

If the IDE setup isn't made by monkeys, suerely it wouldn't rely on a hard- coded download url. They would serve it themselves or ask a web service on their end for the URL to the java installer. Sorry if I sound like a grumpy old man, but it's exactly this sort of thinkning that makes OSS platforms and IDE's so clumsy to work with.

The error is usually the idea of "this tool just tries to do X and doesn't care about Y", or sometimes phrased as "the tool does one thing, and does it well". While that is a noble idea, it should never be used as an excuse for a crappy UX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am still so frustrated that Mono got lambasted for being a M$ trap. It was the biggest FUD I have ever read. Hope to see mono return to use in Linux community again.

<comment><USER16> Why?

The nix world never suffered from lack of decent languages, compilers, development tools, ecosystems and runtimes. The only benefit Mono gives nix users is to write software that's easy to run on Windows and that barely registers on most priority lists. It's been, IIRC, 6 years since I last wrote a "real" desktop app. I did it in C#, but Mono couldn't run it because it relied on Windows-only GUI components. Happily, it was never intended to be deployed on non-Windows environments and everyone was happy.

If I needed to write a desktop application (that's so 90's) that runs identically on both Windows and Linux, I'll just write it in Java.

<comment><USER17> Haven't you heard it? The mobile is the new desktop.

<comment><USER16> I wonder how much of the mobile market cross-platform toolkits have. I've used Titanium, but only for exceedingly simple apps. Anything else is done with the native tools. I know there are apps that require complex device-side logic but, most of the time (at least for me), almost all of the logic runs on a server and all that's left is user interface management.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> STILL no Ubuntu packages. The official repos are back in 2.x.x land.

<comment><USER5> Well compiling it from sources is not _THAT_ hard.

        git clone git://github.com/mono/mono.git
        cd mono
        ./autogen.sh
        make
        sudo make install

<comment><USER18> That might be, but how do you then make a source-package of your program that compiles and installs successfully on the target distributions that don't have an up-to-date mono toolchain? Because while a _developer_ might follow upstream, _users_ shouldn't have to...

<comment><USER18> It's actually quite a bit worse than that. For instance, I successfully built and installed mono locally now, but am unable to run simple gtk-applications.

        git clone git://github.com/mono/mono.git mono.git
        cd mono.git
        ./autogen.sh --prefix=${HOME}/opt
        make get-monolite-latest # Need mono to compile mono
        make EXTERNAL_MCS="${PWD}/mcs/class/lib/monolite/gmcs.exe"
        make install
        export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=${HOME}/opt

I can now successfully compile and run a command-line hello world, but a simple gtk-test (and winforms test) fail when attempting to run the examples. This probably has someting to do with linking and assemblies, but experimenting with PKG_CONFIG_PATH, GAC_PATH and MONO_PATH makes no apparent difference...

       cat <<eof > hello.cs
       using System;
       public class HelloWorld {
        static public void Main () { Console.WriteLine ("Hello Mono World!"); } }
       eof
       mcs hello.cs
       mono hello.exe

       > Hello Mono World!

       cat<<eof > hello-gtk.cs
       using Gtk; using System;

       class HelloWorld {
        static void Main () {
            Application.Init();
            Window w = new Window("Hello Mono World!");
            w.Show();
            Application.Run(); }}
       eof
       mcs hello-gtk.cs -pkg:gtk-sharp-2.0
       mono hello-gtk.exe

       > Unhandled Exception:
        System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or
        assembly 'gtk-sharp, (...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great work! Now if Unity would just update their runtime....

<comment><USER19> That situation is now verging on the comical. Is it really so hard to cut a new deal with Xamarin? Even if they can only offer the new Mono version for paid users in Unity Pro, they need to do _something_.

If Unity go another major version still using Mono 2.6, they seriously risk losing ground among developers making CPU/memory-intensive games. Or even those concerned about optimizing for mobile platforms.

<comment><USER20> "If Unity go another major version still using Mono 2.6, they seriously risk losing ground among developers making CPU/memory-intensive games. Or even those concerned about optimizing for mobile platforms." \- that would be great! I feel they desperately need some competition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There is already a 3.2.8 out, it seems.

[http://www.castlesoft.com.au/new-in- mono-328](http://www.castlesoft.com.au/new-in-mono-328)

<comment><USER5> When you compile from source it tells you it's 4.0.0

<comment><USER21> Is that Mono 4.0.0 or .NET 4.0?

<comment><USER5> Mono. I think it's a bug or something.

        Mono JIT compiler version 4.0.0 (master/c198a39 Pk feb 21 22:02:35 EET 2014)
        Copyright (C) 2002-2014 Novell, Inc, Xamarin Inc and Contributors. www.mono-project.com
            TLS:           __thread
            SIGSEGV:       altstack
            Notifications: epoll
            Architecture:  x86
            Disabled:      none
            Misc:          softdebug
            LLVM:          supported, not enabled.
            GC:            sgen

<comment><USER6> I JUST (today) build from source on github and got this:

         mono -V
        Mono JIT compiler version 3.4.0 (master/8f2d3ea Wed Feb 26 11:59:41 EST 2014)
        Copyright (C) 2002-2014 Novell, Inc, Xamarin Inc and Contributors. www.mono-project.com
            TLS:           __thread
            SIGSEGV:       altstack
            Notifications: epoll
            Architecture:  amd64
            Disabled:      none
            Misc:          softdebug
            LLVM:          supported, not enabled.
            GC:            sgen

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Performance under some benchmarks was improved by more than 20%."

How is Mono's JIT performance compared to Microsoft's? Are they nearing parity?

<comment><USER23> There doesn't seem to be many reliable benchmarks available. I'm not sure why. Here is an in depth benchmark showing Mono lagging very heavily behind Microsoft, but I have no idea if the gap has widened or shrunk since then.

[http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/212856/Head-to-head- benc...](http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/212856/Head-to-head-benchmark- Csharp-vs-NET)

<comment><USER24> That article is 2.5 years old; Mono has gotten _significantly_ better since Xamarin spun off from Novell, and much progress has been made in the last 18 months or so. It would be interesting to re-run those benchmarks with the latest version of Mono though.

<comment><USER23> AFAIK Microsoft's .NET runtime has also made significant improvements in the last 2.5 years, so as I said, it's just a thumb-suck as to whether the gap has changed. Maybe this will get someone interested in doing some comprehensive benchmarking...

<comment><USER25> [https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp/issues/162#issuecomment-280...](https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp/issues/162#issuecomment-28072227)

I did a few benchmarks here.

In recent experiences, .NET runtime is faster in most situations, but sometimes Mono can be faster than .NET. It all depends on what you are doing. In extreme cases, .NET is usually ahead. You also have to account for the JIT time. It's after the JIT that should matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What are some big poster-child success stories for running MVC on Mono in production?

<comment><USER27> Rdio is probably one of the bigger success stories for Xamarin/Mono You can see a list here: [https://xamarin.com/apps](https://xamarin.com/apps)

<comment><USER28> rdio is using the xamarin tools for ios and android.

mvc + mono website on linux success story - i haven't seen one.

<comment><USER29> I'm trying to do that for a small community site but I find the documentation a bit lacking. I know I have to create a directory somewhere and write a web.config in XML but I'm still figuring out the rest. I may end up copying someones Github project and tearing it apart to see how things work in practice, or perhaps my RTFM skills are somewhat lacking lately. But if you'd ask me I'd say the widespread presumption all developers are running Visual Studio.NET with Nuget is part of why you haven't seen those success stories.

On the bright side, I've heard good things coming out of ServiceStack. Apparently it shines in the backend web service department and works well with Mono. It's based on ASP.NET and since the requirements for my little project are fairly minimal, I think it's a bit overkill there. But it's still worth checking out for more demanding projects, IMHO.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Twitter Stock Jumps After Co-Founder Says It Should Consider Selling - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/09/01/twitter-stock-jumps/ <comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if this is related to Apple joining Twitter

[https://twitter.com/apple](https://twitter.com/apple)</comment>


Woody Allen Sues Amazon Studios Claiming Breach of Contract - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/woody-allen-sues-amazon-studios-for-breach-of-contract-11549557790 <comment><USER2> Say what you will about Woody Allen as a person. My understanding is that Amazon is holding the rights to a movie that has been created, and refusing to publish it.

Movies are not the product of a single person, but of thousands. It's tragedy to prevent this massive amount of effort from seeing the light of day.

<comment><USER3> As long as the compensation of any of the workers didn't depend on the financial success of the movie does it really matter?

<comment><USER4> Compensation construed broadly includes future work based on your portfolio. If one did stellar work that otherwise would have yielded future opportunities had the work not been shuttered then the answer is "Yes."

<comment><USER5> A movie doesn't need to be released for the crew to get credits.

<comment><USER6> It does to count as credits to the most important group: the audiences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Check out "match point" by woody Allen. It's one of the best movies I've ever seen.

<comment><USER8> Then you should try its richer forerunner: Crimes & Misdemeanors

<comment><USER9> I still like his "Love and Death"

<comment><USER4> "Love and Death" is fantastic. As are "Bananas", "Play It Again Sam" and "Manhattan".

<comment><USER10> Woody Allen is a comic genius, but I think my favorite movie of his still is his first one, "What's Up, Tiger Lilly." I rarely meet anyone who's seen it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What are the most important Woody Allen movies?

I'm thinking:

        1977: Annie Hall
        1979: Manhattan
        1986: Hannah and Her Sisters
        1989: Crimes and Misdemeanours
        1992: Husbands and Wives
        1993: Manhattan Murder Mystery
        2005: Match Point
        2008: Vicky Cristina Barcelona
        2009: Whatever Works
        2011: Midnight in Paris
        2013: Blue Jasmin

Have I missed anything?

<comment><USER6> Just watch them all and forget about the duds. The SNR is still high enough the be worth it

Radio Days is my personal favourite, but I haven't seen them all yet.</comment></comment>


A Different Road To Work, Bypassing College Dreams - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2012/07/26/157033600/bypassing-college-dreams-a-different-road-to-work

<comment><USER2> HN has a subtle anti-college bias, so I want to put my point out there: my college experience was not defined by my classes or by my professors, but by the serendipitous connections that I made by being mixed in with a bunch of smart people who like to tinker. In addition, being a part of an institution makes it much easier to find out about and get access to lines of research and thinking I normally wouldn't have thought about. I entered as a kid who wanted to design chips, and I left an amateur computational linguistics researcher (emphasis on the amateur). This was something I 'fell into,' not something I sought out.

Also, if you discover something and want to find out more, emailing the person who worked on it is a great start. If this person happens to be part of your institution, you have a 'free pass' to just email them. Compare to if you were just someone off the street: you have to work harder to get a response. It's a little silly, but a very real effect -- once you're "in" people will be more open to you about their work.

This doesn't mean you can't do any of these things if you choose not to go to college, but if you're making that decision then you should know that the experience is more than just 'expensive and ineffective vocational training.'

<comment><USER3> Agreed. The anti-college bias here is astounding. College is an incredible time to learn _everything_.

What are you even interested in? I went to college thinking chemistry or chemical engineering. Found I just didn't like either and moved to computer science. At 18 it's hard to even have a clue.

It's hard to feel sorry for the kids coming out of school with loan debt and a sociology degree. That's a career, but you need to know your field is full of people and it's going to be tough to find a job. Kids today need to adjust their expectations.

But the article is rubbish. 4 year apprenticeship for an associates and your journeyman card? Fine, anyone can find a machinist school (won't cost $44k per year) and be a machinist but that doesn't make you a materials scientist who came up with the alloy. You aren't going to be doing that without college.

<comment><USER4> Can we have this self-discovery process _without_ the giant 6-figure bill?

As someone who went to college myself, I agree that it was a tremendous time for personal growth - it was also expensive as all hell, and I'm lucky I chose a field where paying it off is a piece of cake.

In any case, I think there's a false dichotomy here: there's the apprenticeship/trades camp, and the pro-college camp, but really the truth lies somewhere in between. The economy is moving towards knowledge-based jobs, but for the most part people studying for these jobs have _completely_ abdicated their responsibility to seek apprenticeship and mentorship (in the non-regulated sense of those words).

A programmer with a CS degree and no internships, no open source, no working under experienced talent, is (nearly) worthless. An English major aspiring to write for magazines who has never published anything nor worked with a professional editor is (probably even more) worthless.

The problem here is that so many in the pro-college crowd see a degree as an end-run around having to bust your balls and apprentice with skilled professionals when apprenticeships (or internships if you want to call them that), regardless of college/no-college, is absolutely necessary.

<comment><USER5> >> The economy is moving towards knowledge-based jobs.

>> A programmer with a CS degree and no internships, no open source, no working under experienced talent, is (nearly) worthless. An English major aspiring to write for magazines who has never published anything nor worked with a professional editor is (probably even more) worthless.

Seems you contradict yourself when you claim there is a move towards knowledge based jobs, yet in the very next sentence, advocate that knowledge without experience is "nearly/even more than" worthless.

So are you implying that a person with a CS degree who probably did tons of programming exercises and at least 1-3 projects (i.e. requiring design, doc., etc.), who was taught by these "under experienced" PhD's who have studied the subject, wrote about it, and have done projects for 10+ years of their life produce something that is "nearly" worthless?

Holy cow, either the students priorities were very screwed up or there goes logic and rationality out the door.

<comment><USER6> I just graduated from a private school with a CS degree. Went there on a full boat with only subsidized Stafford loans to cover the cost of my room.

I am now getting into foss since I failed to get in on any of my internships / summer of code last summer, since my piece of paper is effectively worthless. I do have project experience (a course scheduler in C# for .net, a tower defense game in swing, wizard design for a seismometer program the school contracts) but employers don't care about that, especially the projects the school contracted on that I can't show the source to.

So yeah, I've been job hunting for ~4 months (some nice folks on HN even gave me some phone interviews, but it never got past that) and the lack of job experience drives away a vast 99% of employers. I have a good gigabyte and around a million lines or more of assignment and project code I could throw at them, they are just not interested :P

<comment><USER7> I just finished a Master's in CS and am facing the same problem. Just suck it up (hate that expression) and play the recruiter/interview test games. Memorize the basics of all areas of CS (stuff that you would normally look up in 30 seconds) and practice a little whiteboard coding and you'll be fine :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the "stunningly obvious" department...

Seriously, college is practically useless for what people are using it for today (vocational training.) It was not intended to serve that purpose.

The reason that everyone started going to college was that lazy companies used BA degrees as entrance exams because being able to go to college used to be a proxy for 'good breeding'. Therefore, having a college degree was a sure ticket to get a(n office) job. Therefore, everyone started going to college. Therefore, a college degree became a checkbox requirement for a job, not anything that actually helps you get one.

<comment><USER9> I think companies started asking for BA degrees precisely because college education is readily available and almost everyone they are interested in has a degree.

Yes, college is over-hyped, yes we're in tuition bubble not unlike the housing bubble from not-so-distant past but if most of the crop has college education and you're interested in hiring the cream of the crop, requiring a college degree is given.

<comment><USER10> _if most of the crop has college education and you're interested in hiring the cream of the crop, requiring a college degree is given_

I will agree with you that this is how many hiring managers think. I happen to know counterexamples (people who declined to finish college degree programs even though they were admitted to college on financial terms affordable with their family resources) who have nonetheless obtained paying work based on college-graduate-level skills they developed despite lack of a degree. But you correctly state the general state of mind of hiring managers.

That said, the general state of mind of hiring managers is wrong. Preferring people with degrees to people who lack degrees is less supported by research than quite a few other hiring criteria. I last posted my FAQ for Hacker News on company hiring procedures

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768>

seven days ago, so rather than repeat all those keystrokes here, allow me to say that hiring managers have more reliable criteria to look at for hiring job applicants than college degrees or any other kind of biographical data about the applicants. Check the FAQ

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768>

for more details.

<comment><USER11> Where I work we wouldn't fail to at least interview someone without a 4yr college degree with some form (formal or otherwise) of related experience.

However, college degrees do have some advantages:

From the POV of hiree: we recruit on college campuses because that's the only place you find any significant population of qualified people who don't already have full-time jobs.

From the POV of hirer: GMA tests aren't allowed, but when hiring programmers, a CS general knowledge test is, and when comparing dozens of people who all went through exactly the same CS program, it's a pretty darn good proxy for a GMA test.

<comment><USER12> CS general knowledge tests of people going through the same program are not at all a good proxy for a GMA test - there is a lot of variance in how people actually go through the same program, even with the same grades. You can't abstract that down to a test and assume the difference is the result in a difference in intelligence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The average tuition cost is approximately $16,000 per year. Plus assume another $10,000 in living costs, books, etc. $26,000 in total for a complete cost of $104,000 in a 4 year period. Some people choose to go more expensive by going to a private college and some people choose to go a little cheaper by going public but this is an average. Also, a huge assumption is that its just for a 4 year period. According to the Department of Education, only 54% of undergraduates graduate within 6 years. So for the 46% that don't graduate, or take 10 years to graduate, this is a horrible investment. But lets assume your children are in the brilliant first half who finish within six years (and hopefully within four). Is it worth it? First, let's look at it completely from a monetary perspective. Over the course of a lifetime, according to CollegeBoard, a college graduate can be expected to earn $800,000 more than his counterpart that didn't go to college. $800,000 is a big spread and it could potentially separate the haves from the have-nots. But who has and who doesn't?

If I took that $104,000 and I chose to invest it in a savings account that had interest income of 5% per year I'd end up with an extra $1.4 million dollars over a 50 year period. A full $600,000 more. That $600,000 is a lot of extra money an 18 year old could look forward to in her retirement. I also think the $800,000 quoted above is too high. Right now most motivated kids who have the interest and resources to go to college think it's the only way to go if they want a good job. If those same kids decided to not go to college my guess is they would quickly close the gap on that $800,000 spread.

There are other factors as well. I won't be spending $104,000 per child when my children, ages 10 and 7, decide to go to college. College costs have historically gone up much faster than inflation. Since 1978, cost of living has gone up three-fold. Medical costs, much to the horror of everyone in Congress, has gone up six-fold. And college education has gone up a whopping tenfold. This is beyond the housing bubble, the stock market bubble, any bubble you can think of.

So how can people afford college? Well, how has the US consumer afforded anything? They borrow it, of course. The average student now graduates with a $23,000 debt burden. Up from $13,000 12 years ago. Last year, student borrowings totaled $75 billion, up 25% from the year before. If students go on to graduate degrees such as law degrees they can see their debt burden soar to $200,000 or more. And the easy borrowing convinces colleges that they can raise prices even more.

[http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/02/dont-send-your-kids- to-...](http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/02/dont-send-your-kids-to-..).

[http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/10-more-reasons-why- par...](http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/10-more-reasons-why-par..).

[http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/8-alternatives-to- colle...](http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/8-alternatives-to-colle..).

<comment><USER14> _only 54% of undergraduates graduate within 6 year_

I'm guessing the people who don't graduate within 6 years are not paying fulltime tuition, and have an outside job to pay for their degree. So your point is way over-exaggerated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> One problem with apprenticeships in the US is that they aren't really tied in with larger employment landscape. In Germany apprenticeships are an integral part of a highly regulated system of guilds. You can't really run a business as a painter or plumber unless you've gone through an apprenticeship and then followed that up with a "Meister". At that point you can be licensed to have apprentices of your own.

Here in the US everything is more freeform and unregulated so apprenticeships are mostly an informal way of companies and employees to augment the existing labor market.

The other aspect that usually goes unmentioned is that there's a glass ceiling for workers without a university degree, both in Germany and the US. The pay might be more equal in more regulated countries but the status of a university degree is much higher.

What's also interesting is that the relative cost of a university degree is much lower in Germany yet apprenticeships remain popular.

<comment><USER16> The US needs to start pushing vocational schools as much as college. People need an alternative. If college is not for some people, they have a viable alternative.

The German system is something that would work in the US. Unlike the Finnish system, it does have a lot of variation and would have a better chance of working in a larger country.

Also, some for-profit colleges are a scam. It is really hard to tell which are good. They also over promise (employment, etc) results.

<comment><USER17> At least in my area, vocational training is absolutely being pushed. The problem I see is there aren't enough state-funded schools providing inexpensive training for things liks Medical Assisting. There are lots of $20k private programs, but the earnings from the job can't (rationally) justify that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The truth of the matter here is that the girl in the article settled for something other than what she originally wanted to be. Sure, she may have acquired some job security at a fairly young age. But she'll always be a machinist, not an engineer with a focus on international studies, a machinist. I think these apprenticeship opportunities are fantastic for those who absolutely cannot afford college, or those that would only end up earning a useless degree. But if you can afford college, even with loans, it is an experience that you cannot replicate if you do it right.

Here on HN and in the tech/startup community, there has been a ton of college- bashing recently. While I agree that the cost of a college education in America these days is ridiculously high, I still see it as a worthy investment in most situations (I'm glad I was fortunate enough to make that investment). It's an environment where knowledge flows openly and the mistakes of learning are less costly. It's a time where young adults learn about themselves and their place in the world. It's an invaluable source of connections and relationships. In the end, that kind of experience can enable people to become exactly who/what they want to be. That has always been the inherent goal of higher education, but we seem to have gotten lost along the way.

Now in this thread and all over the internet, I've heard story after story of people who went to college and claimed no benefit from it. Many of them state that they never learned anything useful at all. I feel that often this problem is more the fault of the individual than the university system. If a person can claim they went through college without learning, then I must conclude that they didn't try hard enough. Learning is not a passive activity. It requires dialogue, critical thinking, rehearsal, connection-making, and questioning. Learning is something you choose to do.

Now, that is not to say that our colleges and universities are without flaws. Far from it. Current education techniques have become antiquated in face of new technology and a better understanding of how knowledge is acquired. The "sage on the stage" style of lecture is no longer an effective means of enriching young minds. Meanwhile, large universities operate more like corporations than institutes of education. They build huge recreational centers and football stadiums to attract students, while the educational facilities stagnate. High ranking officials take pay raises, while our teachers and professors are paid scraps compared to how important their jobs are. Admission decisions are affected by who you know and how much tuition you can be milked for. Research universities continue to hire brilliant minds from all different fields of research, but whom lack the ability/concern for actually teaching. Furthermore, education in technical fields completely ignores "soft skills" that make for truly great engineers/scientists/mathematicians. Meanwhile, tuition rates continue to rise.

I have seen all of the above, firsthand. Education has hardly changed since the Cold War, and it's time for a revolution. Abandoning the higher education system is not an option if we wish to continue developing ourselves and to grow as a species. This community here is full of some of the most intelligent and creative individuals that I have ever interacted with. Surely, we can fix this.

TL;DR The girl in this article gave up on her dream. If utilized to its full potential, a college education is a very beneficial experience, for those that can afford it, and should not be passed up. Our education system has A LOT of flaws, but abandoning it is not the answer. We need to fix the system to ensure a brighter future.

</comment><comment><USER19> Slightly offbeat question about this article: does it seem strange that the featured apprentice, good at maths, was planning to go to university to study International Relations?

Of course, she's just one person so it could be pure chance, but lots of Americans seem to study (or major in) communications, business, subjects that seem to lurk around the social sciences. I mean, if this apprentice is good at maths and doing well working for Siemens, why wasn't she guided towards a course in mechanical or electrical engineering?

<comment><USER20> You're kidding, right? You haven't read _any_ of the many posts on HN about women in CS or engineering?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Speaking as an 18 year old almost done with my first Summer internship, I could not agree more. I went into college with a pretty solid grasp on Java (competed on the national level) and didn't learn a thing my first year. However, as soon as I stepped into my internship, I was learning from day one. You just can't learn the same lessons in school as you can from writing code that silently deletes database records when they should be getting updated...

Yeah. Internships are important. :)

</comment><comment><USER22> I completely agree. There are obviously degrees which teach useful skills, but the majority of people studying humanities at a large university shouldn't be there. They're learning very little which is applicable to their life, and they're not bright enough to continue in that area of academia. The actual useful skills that you learn doing an english degree could probably be covered in a single semester.

<comment><USER23> What is a useful skill? How do you decide if it is useful? Why can't those people spend the time learning what they want to learn? Why does everything have be applicable to life in the way you imply?

Do you know what someone learns from an English degree? How is all that different from a single semester of an English class?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> More like college is overrated and apprenticeship non-existent. You need to both be connected and wealthy to get an unpaid internship, where you will get experience in data entry and coffee-making. Any actual apprenticeship program has people breaking their necks to get in.

$25-$30K a year to learn a trade? I could find you 10,000 candidates within the hour, even if it was located in BFE, Montana.

<comment><USER25> I went to a big party college, and I cold called small businesses until I got my first paid internship. That turned in to a full time offer which turned in to business school (massive student debt, worth every penny), which turned in to multiple offers from excellent finance companies.

I am neither wealthy or connected (orignally). Now I'm on my way to being both.

People want to do the easy stuff, the hard stuff is putting yourself out there and picking up a phone. You can always find 10,000 people that want an easy to get opportunity.

<comment><USER24> You did what you had to do, and any success you have is hard earned. It is also not scalable and an enormous waste of productivity.

<comment><USER26> Not scalable? That's what _most_ people are doing for salaried jobs. There is a tiny sliver of people that found their jobs on Monster.com, there is also a tiny sliver of people with 'connections' (they're not the 1% for nothing). Everyone else muddled through job fairs, online listings, and cold calls to get their jobs.

My work history and how I got the job, pumping gas (family), McDonalds (cold called), ski shop (cold called), engineering internship (cold called), startup internship (cold called), fortune 500 company (college job fair), startup (cold called).

Cold called = email, showing up in person, or picking up the phone. But it means 'the job was never listed anywhere'.

My girlfriend has had many more positions, but the main ones were temp (temp agency), 1st internship (cold called), better internship (bosses at both internships were married, when husband at first internship could no longer pay her, the wife hired her elsewhere), temp job (temp agency), crappy job (listed online), awesome startup job (cold called).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Australia--particularly Western Australia and Queensland--is currently undergoing the largest resources boom in history thanks to China's insatiable appetite for petroleum and iron.

Because of this there are two industries that are big winners: construction and the direct resources sector. EVeryone else--including software--are losers. So you might earn A$100-150K (base) as a senior (5-10+ years professional experience) software engineer in a capital city but you will have an extraordinarily high cost of living.

To put this in comparison, my nephew at 17, was a deckhand on a tugboat in a mining port making $120K+. Now that he has a license to captain a vessel up to 25 metres I believe he's rapidly approaching if not exceeding $200K.

Now this isn't without expenses either. A crappy home in a mining town can probably put you back $1000/week or more in rent (20 years ago they couldn't give these houses away at $50,000).

He's not a special example either. Those who did apprenticeships (eg electricians, plumbers, fitters and turners) are particularly well-off. Australia is highly regulated when it comes to these jobs. If you say you're a licensed electrician and you're not you can go to jail. The only way to get licensed is to do a 4 year apprenticeship.

The plus side of this is that the standard for Australian tradesmen, at least in my experience, is exceptionally high. The UK is essentially unregulated here (by comparison) and if you're in the UK, hiring a licensed Australian tradesman is really your best bet if you want quality work.

Now, software engineers are on the high end of the salary scale for those who must (or generally do) go to university. You could easily end up in other disciplines only making $50,000 a year. Trust me when I tell you that in Australia this is a pretty low standard of living now unless you were lucky enough to have bought a house 10+ years ago.

So what you're seeing in this post is nothing new to Australia and it's even more pronounced in Australia.

I actually think this is an economically structural problem. Building a new house now (both my brothers-in-law are in construction) costs about $1500-2000 per square meter (for single storey, add 50% for two-storey). New apartments in West Perth now sell for up to $10,000+ per square meter. This is insanely high and well beyond local living standards (for all but a few).

Anyway, picking up one of these trades in Australia at least instead of going to university has been lucrative for many years and shows no signs of abating.

<comment><USER28> The devastating effect a natural resources boom can have on an economy are known as:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease>

<comment><USER29> Almost identical to the financialization that's been going on with Wall Street.

<comment><USER30> Usually termed "rent-seeking". I'll have to think a bit on whether / how this is related to Dutch disease.

Off the top of my head, though, DD is exploiting a resource to create, but concentrate, wealth. RS is exploiting a market anomaly or manipulation to create a self-directed wealth stream, though often or usually decreasing overall societal wealth in the process.

DD is economically beneficial activity with an inequitable distribution of gains.

RS is economically _harmful_ activity with an inequitable distribution of gains.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> While I definitely don't undermine college degrees, it only gives you a foundation to get out there in the real world. As far as corporate or job related skills are concerned, you pick most of them up on the job. That is why I personally think that the usual 4 year structure needs a serious overhaul.

</comment><comment><USER32> Apprenticeships used to be the way that people became masters at anything. Master craftsmen, master artisans, master chefs, and master sushi makers (<http://www.magpictures.com/jirodreamsofsushi/>). It wasn't until reading this story that I truly thought about the relationship between apprenticeships and the batches of graduates from "accelerator" programs.

Today, accelerator programs are largely exclusive. In fact, their popularity has risen in part to their exclusivity and privilege. The exclusivity stems from the fact that after the period of "acceleration" is over, the ability to raise capital is much higher. After the apprenticeship, the apprentice just has a "job", most likely for the master.

Accelerators have done a great job exploiting their "artificial scarcity" to a great extent, making them highly desirable. The "masters" or "mentors" in the accelerator model differ from apprenticeships in that they are multifaceted and have a variety of different backgrounds. In an apprenticeship, usually the masters are focused uniquely on one trade.

According to the article, "apprenticeships are still fighting an image battle. Only 0.3 percent of the American workforce are apprentices, according to a report from American University economist Robert Lerman."

This sounds like the job of a great design and marketing team. A project I worked on as a student in Design School called the New Options Initiative (<http://www.newoptionsproject.org/home>) sponsored by the WK Kellogg foundation sought to create new alternatives for people who dropped out of school. The project recognizes that school isn't for everyone, and we need alternative career/job paths for people that are similar to the apprenticeship model.

It'd be interesting to see what happened if we just changed the words apprenticeship to accelerator, and provided more means for self-employment and entrepreneurship to the participants. I'm willing to bet that more people would consider it a viable alternative.

</comment><comment><USER33> The headline is a bit of an attention grab, the article doesn't really get into any negatives about college, but I think this concept is spot on and why many 20 and 30 somethings find themselves unemployed or underpaid these days. You can gain a lot from college if you use it correctly, but it's become the thing you "have to do" when you finish high school. The problem is, many high school grads don't know what they want, or how to make college work for them, and so they end up floundering between majors and eventually graduating with some general degree. This of course means they are facing 2 huge challenges for finding a job upon graduation: 1) they likely have no real employable skills 2) they likely have nothing to differentiate them from the thousands of other candidates who also graduated in a similar position.

High school students: if you don't know what you want to get out of college, don't go. Or put it off for a few years. Apprenticeship, entry-level work (where you learn a skill or trade, not flipping burgers), travel: these things will help you figure out a goal for your life. The adults around you telling you that college is the only way to get a job are out of touch with the realities of your position as a young, inexperienced adult entering the workforce.

<comment><USER34> How are people who might struggle to afford to go to college supposed to afford to just "travel" as you put it?

<comment><USER33> I'm not sure how you read that as I was suggesting just travel. Travel was suggested as one alternative, but so was working entry level or finding an apprenticeship, the implication there being you'll learn a skill and get paid.

I do think everyone should find time to travel at some point in their life, and it's usually easier when you're young. You'd be surprised how cheaply you can travel if you're willing to live on a budget. But if you just have no money, by all means work. And save.

But what I'm tired of seeing is the legions of teenagers who end up $50k+ in debt with a meaningless degree in communications or something, who then complain they can't get a job. They ended up in that place because they went to college because they were "supposed to", but had no idea how to make it useful for themselves. Doing other things for a few years will help you gain perspective into how you might use college for yourself, or realize that you don't need it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> A minor point:

"And so one of my goals ultimately in this company is to become an engineer, and possibly, you know, travel around the world, go to other Siemens factories, and maybe, you know, work with other engineers from other countries."

It sounds like she has the degree-bearing, recognized-by-law engineer in mind.

</comment><comment><USER36> I've been a jack of trades in the web dev/IT space for an embarrassingly long time (considering how little money I make). Two years ago I decided to go back to school to finish college (I'm 45), this time w/ the aim of pursuing a degree in computer science. So far so good: I'm less mystified/intimidated by math than I was and the intellectual stimulation of the academy is a refreshing change from corporate software engineering shops where innovative, forward-looking ways of doing things is not necessarily embraced as a virtue. Anyway, nothing ventured, nothing gained I say.

</comment><comment><USER37> That's what we Swiss knew for a long, long time already ...

</comment><comment><USER38> It depends on the profession. In some professions, college is useful, in others, not so much.

What colleges should NOT be used for is a proxy to measure the intelligence or diligence of people (unless you're in one of those very few jobs where a college environment mimics your work environment).

It is dreadfully inefficient, significantly inaccurate, and in net, almost certainly reducing overall economic output.

</comment><comment><USER39> don't (at least some people) do both any more? does industrial sponsorship still exist for university students?

i got sponsorship from british aerospace. they paid part of my fees and in return i worked for them for a year before university (in the apprentice program) and over the summers.

i'd recommend that approach for anyone - even if (like me) you go on to an academic career (i continued for a phd). and i should admit that although i was on the apprentice scheme, as a future university student i wasn't held to the same standards as the people who would be working in the workshops (for example they had to get closer tolerances when machining things).

BUT the college courses we took as part of the apprenticeship (at the local polytechnic) were pretty bad. i don't know how anyone would have learnt much there. so it's not all perfect. it seems like the ideal world would have both university-quality courses _and_ practical experience (and don't vocational university programs include industrial experience anyway - at least for engineers?)

<comment> UK-AL When my dad had a apprenticeship, there were two types, technical, and craft. Craft apprenticeships were machinists, and they had no chance of ever going to university. They often stayed on the shop floor for the rest of their lives.

Technical apprenticeships(Often requiring o-levels and such, and came from grammar/technical schools), never touched the shop floor and many went on to university. Example Apprentices - Draughtsman and such.

Obviously different companies operated differently, if you was operating as a machinist... on the university track...

The image of CNC machine operator going on to engineering at an elite college may be nice, but often it's just PR to get people to apply for the jobs and a fairly exceptional career path. Most don't.

<comment><USER39> i don't completely follow your argument, so forgive me if this is irrelevant, but i wasn't saying that cnc operators should go to elite universities. my points were, i guess, that: (1) even if you're going to university it's a pleasure to get workshop experience and (2) the taught part of the apprenticeship (at the poly) was very poor quality.

i don't mean by (2) that it would stop a cnc operator from going to an elite university. what i mean is that i am sure future cnc operators hated it just as much as we (future grads) did, because it was very difficult to understand or learn anything.

<comment> UK-AL I wasn't saying anything really other than the fact it's often used as PR. I was just saying the if you was on the technical track, at my dads old company you would not be training to be a machinist at all.

I also agree we need make sure that education is top quality as well. We should not let them down with bad quality education. They should have high quality education that can lead onto serious study if that's what they want to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Like someone else already said, you get a generalized education with colleges, unless you know what you want to do for the rest of your life at 17. The other flip side to apprenticeships, particularly in the US, a year into it company management could decide to shut down this cost center and then what?

</comment><comment><USER41> An apprenticeship isn't a generalized education like going to college is. Even though I majored in computer science, I still took physics, chemistry, english, psychology, and more classes.

If I did an apprenticeship, I feel like my career choices would be limited to that one field that I worked on.

<comment><USER42> You can learn computer science, programming, physics, chemistry, english, psychology and more...in your own home. You don't need a B.A. or a B.S. for that.

You cannot learn the skills companies like Siemens are offering like that, definitely not in a way that would get you a job.

Closest to it is how my dad got started, by tinkering with motorcycles in his youth and eventually getting a start in manufacturing, but it was a really really long time before he got a decent job.

<comment> UK-AL You don't know what you don't know. You may think you know computer science, but you could be missing critical parts. That's what formal courses are for.

<comment><USER42> I thought that was what books and bibliographies were for.

<comment><USER5> Try asking a book a question. Even so, text books cost a butt load. Might as well be a part of a college when you can ask profs even after walking out the door.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I can't help but be reminded of PG's essay, "Why Nerds are Unpopular," where he talks about teenage apprentices in the Renaissance. Also, his point about specialization seems appropriate here.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html>

</comment><comment><USER44> We need more of this. We need post-secondary education that focuses on giving people real-world, practical skills. There's only so much room in our economy for psychologists and communications majors.

<comment><USER45> You know, psychologists get an awful amount of bashing places. Speaking as a psychologist (almost PhD qualified) working in web analytics, it really isn't deserved.

A good psychology program will give you:

Good communication skills and some insight into how organisations work. Relatively OK statistics skills (no statistician, but at least knowing about the problem with multiple comparisons)

Excellent experimental design and analysis skills. Good human interaction HCI skills (sometimes).

These are extremely useful skills for web analysts and market researchers. And while market research is not expanding that much, web analytics is. I could easily have done the job I'm doing now with just my undergrad (though they might not have hired me), the major problem was that I didn't even know what web analytics was when I finished my degree.

That being said, i spent 9 months unemployed a few years after finishing my degree and during my doctorate I focused on giving myself statistics and programming skills so that I would never be unemployed again, so maybe I'm not typical of psychology students.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The Australian dollar is currently at parity with the US dollar, so it is as high as you think.

</comment><comment><USER47> Replacing unions, one apprenticeship at a time!

</comment><comment><USER48> We could go on days and days about this matter (and maybe we should).

But we live in the times where nobody knows what will be going on in 30 years time†, so I believe this quote is spot on: "Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything one learned in school."-AE

† to all who don't agree with this statement - we can't report weather for 5 days in advance, let alone know the economy and everything else in 30 years

</comment><comment><USER49> Software Engineering should the same really. Apprenticeship.

<comment> UK-AL They exist in the UK. They essentially amount to working towards java certs ([http://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq- dad/db_pages.ge...](http://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq- dad/db_pages.getpage?page_id=458&get_params=p_track_id:JSE7Prog)) or .net certs.

Not exactly a well rounded education in cs...

I would hate to miss the cool stuff in cs, and just become specialised in corporate software...</comment></comment>