631 karma · joined August 23, 2016
For an EE degree, U Colorado Boulder has an express entry Masters in Electrical Engineering on Coursera. No Bachelor's required. $15K USD or so.
If you just wanted an MS in CS, poke around Coursera. Ball State, Colorado, and I think Clemson all offer Master's degrees without Bachelor's being necessary.
If you need a BS in CS for whatever reason, Western Governor's University is regionally accredited (better than nationally) and is both inexpensive and as fast as you want to make it. $6-7K USD per year. Personally, I consider Southern New Hampshire's offering to be more rigorous, but it's also more expensive. There is also a BS in CS from University of London on Coursera, but I haven't really looked deeply at the curriculum.
Email me at willhslade at gmail dot com for more of my thoughts.
Fine, if it isn't the real reason, what is the real reason? Why can't any executives, at any organization, proffer a reason that makes sense?
No judgment here to those who did, but during the pandemic, several people, including several software engineers, took the opportunity to work multiple jobs. Notably, at Equifax, which is probably the worst place to do it because they have records of most people's employment. https://www.businessinsider.com/equifax-used-itsproduct-to-f...
This is the main reason. Management doesn't want you pulling 2 salaries, even if you could, so they are trying to make it difficult so you don't even try.
In addition, if WFH becomes normalized, there is a lot of debt floating office buildings in major cities, and there will be a great renegotiation. This is really bad for senior management, the stock market, transit systems and the budget of most cities. So most people that manage you and manage your managers are aligned against you. https://nypost.com/2024/08/02/real-estate/huge-midtown-offic...
Lastly, and I'm only mentioning this because I think it needs to be said, but I think that most people who are pushing WFH are short sighted. If it is proved conclusively that software development can be managed and completed remotely, then it will devalue your labour as you are forced to compete with smart people in countries with significantly lower housing and energy costs. Anecdotally, this is already occurring.
One, the FAANGs have been captured by MBA types, not computer scientists, so they do not have the background to carefully gauge what is and is not technically possible. Given that the C Suite is invested, are you as a middle manager going to speak up. When you have people, even Musk, claiming that X will be possible in Y years, I discount it. Even Hinton isn't close to the tools here.
Two, there are areas that they seem to have genuine use. Boilerplate email generators, musicians, graphic designers, and visual effects people should watch their back. Professors who merely add problems from another textbook than the assigned one are likely also in trouble. Maybe things like logic programming or unit tests, not sure, but those seem harder to mess up.
Three, we are seeing what happens when a statistical engine, and not a logic engine run amok. If you add non relevant information or change the order of elements, AFAIK, these tools cannot incorporate the change in information. So I think that their usefulness as a teaching tool is also overstated. If we ever get an engine that can explain it's choices, well, that is also a difference.
Lastly, tech is really looking for a genuinely transformational technology. They arguably haven't had a real hit since cloud computing. Maybe since the iPhone. Their last few attempts have run into the difficulty that the universe may be harder to model inside a silicon box than is worth it (self driving cars, cryptocurrency, video game streaming), and if they have to go from never ending growth companies to large S&P 500 companies that have to compete... well... things will be different. Especially compensation for medium talent software engineers.
However: Deepmind seems like they are 50 years in the future for all of this, so if someone there says I'm wrong about any of this, listen to them and not me.
Let's just agree to disagree.
Canada has the big 5 / 6 and then a lot of credit unions. Still not 1/10 as many as the good old USA, and that's one industry.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/william...
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2016-08-...
Might be worth a quick Google before posting.
Couple charts. Disposable income vs house costs, USA then Canada. https://www.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/s/SIRo14xudI
Relatedly, debt to income ratios, Canada vs USA. https://ritholtz.com/2013/10/household-debt-to-income-ratio-...
So Canadians like to spend too much for housing, live credit and thus don't invest. Why do they do that and does that matter? Well, we do that mainly because house appreciation isn't taxed as income (risk aversion in action) and it does matter because it crowds out investment in things businesses use to make money.
WSJ has argued that this is the second leg of the crisis: we can't earn our way out of it, because our productivity is poorer than the USA, at 71%. https://www.wsj.com/articles/canadas-poor-productivity-has-r...
Thirdly, Canada is cold and as a result we need a lot of energy to exist. Are energy prices declining? https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/energy-consumpt...
Forthly, I'm sure you're aware that the USA is deeply in debt and that the higher interest rates to combat inflation are pinching the ability of governments to operate. What you may not be aware of is that our Central Bank does whatever the Federal Reserve does in terms of rates about 70% of the time. If they did something different, bond traders would likely be able to destroy our currency. So we are trapped right now, hoping inflation ends real soon.
Lastly, to paraphrase a Mexican saying:Canada is far from God and too close to the United States. Our best and brightest leave to make 30% more in America, where the language and culture is very similar. We have been watching American television our entire lives. We don't have a market of 350 million people to sell to, and out government protected oligopolies are not able to compete in the USA. Our banks are making a push, but that's likely to be regional In America and not national.
This sums up the business climate. https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1013522
Personally, I've also noticed that because there are basically 4 companies to work for in any vertical, and there are fewer tier 1 cities to work in in Canada, middle management here is mostly concerned about avoiding mistakes rather than competing and excellence.
But I don't really know America, it seems like it's a hyper competitive place where you don't get to take your vacation time, and heaven help you if you really need a doctor and you are poor. Every country sucks in its own way.