saschajustin

Wouldn't a smart student realize that they can't trust their Professors?

If you can't spot a dishonest salespitch from an academic, doesn't that make you gullible?

Smart people make decisions based on evidence. Gullible people trust their elders.

I can't see any better solution to human gullibility than to herd all the gullible people into a reproductive dead end. This means gullible men should be put into a situation of poverty so they can't find mates, and gullible women should be made to work in careers until they turn 38 and their likelihood of reproduction drops into the single digits.

If we can't make gullible people smart, we can at least make sure their genes leave the gene pool.

My thesis is that people who are this naive and manipulable are not actually that smart.

But I do get your point and have lived it and seen it first hand.

Having said that.. I truly believe that academia is now SELECTING for these types of people: naive, foolish, simple-minded, trusting, innocent, gullible.

Only people with those traits are dumb enough to get into it.

The smartest people, who have not just intelligence but foresight, self-control, cunning, and guile, are found at Wall Street, in med school, or as high-level executives in major corporations.

They aren't doing science because they are too smart for science. Science is for dunces.

Would your smartest citizens really make such dumb life choices?

My professors pushed me so hard to get on the grad school track.

I was too smart to do something so stupid.

Professors are no longer the smartest people in society because only idiots go into academia. Grad students are often not the best or brighest but people with some kind of mental illness that prevents them from making rational long-term decisions.

There is no way that an intelligent person would ever try to get into academia in this climate. The people who try are on par with the pothead guitar player starting a garage band to get rich--they're not smart.

Household income is not the metric being used. It is income associated with a particular occupation that is used to class order those occupations.

I guess you're right about failing to conform to colloquial myths and falsehoods. I tend to want to align my observations with facts and research rather than pop culture misunderstandings and ignorance.

You're reading way too far into it...

I never said greybeards are "mean", I said they are influential. Greybeards are more influential on Zuck than vice versa when it comes to technology choice. That's why Zuck chose greybeard certified tech to erect facebook on.

Most educated? Yes.

Most intelligent? No.

Smart people have been shunning science and academia since the 90s. The best and brightest work on Wall Street and they do tend to have kids--their genes for intelligence do pass on.

It is very encouraging to hear that people who make dumb life choices are being prevented from reproducing their foolish genes.

Maybe in a few generations no one will be stupid enough to work for a boss that doesn't reward them, and then we will have reform.

Downvote me all you want. You can't handle the truth.

I'm not contradicting your observations.

I'm pointing out a sociological fact.

You do not know the definition of lower middle class.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_middle_class

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer_%2...

The median income for a programmer is $69,708. This falls into the lower middle class.

When Silicon Valley salaries are adjusted to account for cost of living, programmers making over $100,000 still fall into the LOWER middle class.

People who get into software chasing money and elite status are ignorant of the fact that programmers are not elite and do not have high social status. They have lower middle class status and pay--which is better than working class at least.

Millenials do not have a choice between "elite social status" and "comfortable middle class". They have a choice between middle class and lower class. What you are calling elite is actually just middle class.

Millenials are at the bottom of a pyramid in a stagnating economy that doesn't offer the same choice that was offered to their parents. We are a depression generation. Programming is one of the few lower middle class career paths still available. Most new jobs in this new economy (that are available to millenials) are working class as part of the service economy.

Jobs that do provide a middle class living are either dissapearing as the boomers retire from them, or require a lot of competition to win.

The amount of money you need to live a middle class life is much harder to achieve in 2015 than it was 40 years ago in 1975.

Linus' beard maybe isn't yet long enough to count as "grey" but, in any case, he's not a millenial. He entered the field circa 1990, whereas this self-proclaimed greybeard author started in 1995.

So for the discussion of this article Linus is even older/greyer than the self-proclaimed "get off my lawn" author.

Zuck is a millenial but he's far more of a businessman than he is a programmer.

Zuck hasn't really programmed since Facebook took off. He's a business owner/operator, not an engineer. Writing an MVP LAMP webapp that is then fixed up by others is NOT the same as having an influence on the processes and procedures used in the construction of software--which is what the OP is complaining about.

Facebook was a business success not a technology success.

As a millenial who is very familiar with capitalist exploitation of myself and my peers, I am 100% in favor of unionization, regulation, and association.

It's the boomer and Gen X tech people that I talk to who are the most opposed to unionization, talking about labour relations, etc.

Gen X techies in particular have this strange and incomprehensible hatred for unions.

Anyway I absolutely would like to change the rules of the game through collective action. Doesn't seem like it's in the cards though--the tech industry is under the thumb of a much bigger neoliberal agenda--and the string pullers in tech are either:

1. Billionaires who oppose collective action for obvious selfish reasons

2. Strange Gen X anarchist cyberpunks (or something?) who oppose unionization because they think it's somehow associated with communism and goes against the hacker ethos.

Zuckerberg dances to the tune of the greybeards just as I do. Did Zuckerberg code the backend of facebook? Hell no. He hired people to do it. What programming technologies did those people use? Styles and methods passed down by greybeards. Techniques learned at Stanford University. Techniques learned from Hacker News.

Zuckerberg himself played the tech tune sung by greybeards before him--LAMP was not invented by millenials. LAMP was not popularized by millenials. Zuckerberg's Facebook was a LAMP project.

Of course people showing up at newbie events are newbies!

The people pulling the strings sit in boardrooms, academic boards, they have office hours, people come to them!

Linus is 45 years old. He's not a millenial, he's a greybeard.

Zuckerberg never made any technological advances. His company was a market success but it was based on LAMP... nothing technologically novel about it. Not even the concept was novel--it was a direct myspace rip off.

I'm sure there will be millenials who have an influence on the technology and direction of software. But they certainly aren't the people in charge TODAY and they certainly are not responsible for the state of tech today.

Good lord!

Don't confuse envy with hatred. I don't hate old people, I envy them! I envy Wedge Martin who got into tech in a time when it was professionally acceptable and viable to drill down into details. I envy a time when you could have a career based on fundamentals rather than buzzwords and rapidly learning frameworks.

I have tremendous respect for greybeard, which is precisely why I recognize that greybears are NOT all the same.

There are different kinds of greybeards. There is especially a wide gulf between the greybeards that have POWER and INFLUENCE and the ones that have been SIDELINED by other greybeards.

The field is not run by the young. The young dance to the tune of money and expertise. But not all greybeards are allowed into the club of influence.

The ageism is not something that is pushed by 20-somethings. it is pushed by employers and those holding the purse-strings. The employers also pull the strings of the teachers, like my computer science professors (greybeards) who taught us that we should not worry about peeking into the black box. Who taught me the waterfall method. Who taught me the agile method too. Who taught me everything I know.

Powerful and influential greybeards (money & position) taught me everything I know. Other greybeards then get mad at me when they don't like what I was taught.

>If you don't like the way you perceive the game being played, then you are completely free to change the rules of the game.

This is just absurd. No one is free to change the rules of the game, or those rules wouldn't be rules.

The rules of this game are set down by those with the most power. A small handful of elite tech winners at the top of industry, academia, and finance.

C'est la vie

Blaming this on millenials rather than the training they receive by employers and professors is insane.

I would love to dig down into every nuance and detail. I don't have time for that because I'm working 60 hour weeks churning out deliverables to keep up velocity. My employers don't have time or budget for me to drill down into the details, they just want features and they want them yesterday.

My employers are not millenials. The VCs who fund my company are not millenials.

It's absurd to blame the most powerless group of people for this. Blame the powerful--the ones who dictate the work culture.

Young people, new programmers, and other groups who have no power are not responsible for the nature of a field.

Old people control the nature of every field. Old greybeards are the ones who made computer science this way--it's just those greybeards that this man disaproves of.

This man isn't a billionaire VC, a tenured Comp Sci professor, an author of programming books, or a CEO hiring and training the kinds of employees he wants.

This guy isn't in charge, so he blames young people and assumes they are in charge. Ridiculous. Young people are just followers. They follow the money, they do what they're told, they adopt fashions in order to SURVIVE, not out of some kind of "strange entitlement."

It's insane to think that the least powerful members of a field are the ones controlling it.

Is the medical field controlled by medical students, or by 60 year old medical authorities?

Is chemical engineering controlled by new graduates, or by 60 year old engineering authorities?

It's completely ludicrous to imply that programming is somehow being led astray by young people. Young people have no power. They do what they are told.

The "black box" programming philosophy was not invented by Gen Y. It was invented in the 80s at least and taught by greybeard professors.

The hip new language trend was not invented by Gen Y but was pushed by VCs and other string pulling money-masters. Paul Graham pushed LISP and Python and generally advocated for the creation of new, hipper languages.

The ageism in the field is not something that is coming from young people either. It is coming from employers with the purse strings who recognize that young people are MORE EXPLOITABLE than old people and so they can get more work for their dollars.

The reason for ageism in tech is to keep industry veterans away from impressionable young workers--what if the veterans and the youngins form some kind of union or association that drives up costs?

Old people lead every field. Young people do what they're told. Old people lead programming too--this guy just isn't one of the influencers. He isn't a 50 year old VC, a 50 year old Comp Sci prof, a 50 year old CEO, a 50 year old BDFL.

So to summarize... a man born into privilege is annoyed by poor people.

The guy equates working for a paycheck with entitlement... how out of touch can you be?

Working for a paycheck is something you do out of economic neccessity--for survival, NOT entitlement.

Getting paid to work on your hobbies in the tech industry in 1995 is basically winning the lottery. Most people would kill to have this chance. This guy is completely blind to his privilege.

But instead of recognizing how neoliberal economics have destroyed the middle class and churned out a new "Depression-Era" generation that are forced to "chase the money" in order to eat... he is going to whine about how kids these days suck and are entitled.

Fucking amazing. Gen Y has the worst economic prospects since the actual great depression, how the fuck can we be spoiled?