Originally posted by Tasty Onions
This seems to be the big trend this year in technical / libertarian crowds, talking about the worthlessness of college. Most of the babble strangely coming from ing people who went to college, LOL.
It's the cool thing to bash right now. Been all over CNN for the last week or two.
Sushipunk
quote:
Originally posted by srussell0018
I was just trying to get you 100 copies of the RSPB Pocket Guide to British Birds. Dick :mad:
Well, it's the thought that counts, I guess.
CorneliusCB21T
the U.S/U.K is not a place where vast amount people want to leave...just yet ;)
Joss Weatherby
quote:
Originally posted by Lews
It's the cool thing to bash right now. Been all over CNN for the last week or two.
I been bashing it for years. :p Good to see people finally agreeing with me. :D
Tasty Onions
Thiel is a smart guy, but at the same time an idiot for generalizing from the crop of brains and skillsets in Silicon Valley to everyone else's situation. Retarded.
CorneliusCB21T
at some point bill gates was not hiring computer science majors, and it makes sense; if there were a video game academy, would the trained competitors out perform their 'bedroom' counterparts?
Tasty Onions
quote:
Originally posted by CorneliusCB21T
at some point bill gates was not hiring computer science majors, and it makes sense; if there were a video game academy, would the trained competitors out perform their 'bedroom' counterparts?
False dichotomy. Most CS majors I've known were already "bedroom" hobbyists long before they got their degrees. But I guess there is probably a bit more careerist majoring going on right now since there's a big boom (or bubble depending on whom you ask).
shaw
quote:
Originally posted by srussell0018
I got into the #15 school but I didn't want to go there because I was 99% sure that the only reason was that I was a 3rd generation legacy, and both my grandfather and great grandfather had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to them throughout the years. That and it was too large of a school imo.
What was the top 15 that you left?
Wash U
Colllege educations aren't worthless, but they have been reduced, in many fields, to little more than credentials. In a lot of industries, it's used more as a screening tool than as an actual qualification (as it relates to course study). Outside of professional degrees, there aren't many that serve a greater purpose than that of weeding out the unqualified and keeping the talented mentally acute. A lot of companies, in more specialized industries, especially, are simply looking for smart, driven people to train, and are relying on the collegiate acceptance process as their screener, instead. The name on the top winds up being the only important thing. The problem with that is that if they keep pushing tuition to astronomical highs (WashU is almost $60k/year now), people are just going to thumb their noses at those pedigrees altogether. It's getting absurd.
shaw
Also, HI, ENYDO.
/self-explanatory
Tasty Onions
quote:
Over the next two years, Hammerbacher assembled a team to build a new class of analytical technology. His crew gathered huge volumes of data, pored over it, and learned much about people's relationships, tendencies, and desires. Facebook has since turned these insights into precision advertising, the foundation of its business. It offers companies access to a captive pool of people who have effectively volunteered to have their actions monitored like so many lab rats. The hope—as signified by Facebook's value, now at $65 billion according to research firm Nyppex—is that more data translate into better ads and higher sales.
After a couple years at Facebook, Hammerbacher grew restless. He figured that much of the groundbreaking computer science had been done. Something else gnawed at him. Hammerbacher looked around Silicon Valley at companies like his own, Google (GOOG), and Twitter, and saw his peers wasting their talents. "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads," he says. "That sucks."
You might say Hammerbacher is a conscientious objector to the ad-based business model and marketing-driven culture that now permeates tech. Online ads have been around since the dawn of the Web, but only in recent years have they become the rapturous life dream of Silicon Valley. Arriving on the heels of Facebook have been blockbusters such as the game maker Zynga and coupon peddler Groupon. These companies have engaged in a frenetic, costly war to hire the best executives and engineers they can find. Investors have joined in, throwing money at the Web stars and sending valuations into the stratosphere. Inevitably, copycats have arrived, and investors are pushing and shoving to get in early on that action, too. Once again, 11 years after the dot-com-era peak of the Nasdaq, Silicon Valley is reaching the saturation point with business plans that hinge on crossed fingers as much as anything else. "We are certainly in another bubble," says Matthew Cowan, co-founder of the tech investment firm Bridgescale Partners. "And it's being driven by social media and consumer-oriented applications."
