I find mainstream hostility towards skilled workers really interesting because if you had replaced this group of people with any other group of people like women or other ethnic minorities, you can really start to see how outright hostile people are.
If you actually take the maxim of fairness and equality seriously, skilled foreign workers are by far the most unfairly discriminated group of people. Much more than blacks and women who are supposedly discriminated against in tech. Unlike women and blacks, skilled foreign workers actually have the government with arbitrary set of standards to determine who can work and who can't.
Another part of the immigration story that's fascinating is illegal immigrant stories are almost always come with some sob story to make readers feel empathic towards them. Such stories are almost never told with skilled immigrants.
I don't think anyone is hostile towards the workers themselves. It seems more like they are hostile towards disney and the in-sourcing firm which pulled this off. The entire point of H-1B visas is to fill positions when Americans can't be found to do the work. How they can pull off laying off an entire department and replacing them with H-1Bs is very confusing to me. I'd love to hear an explanation for it. What loophole are they using?
I imagine it is the classic loophole of "ask forgiveness rather than permission", which when talking about corporations becomes "take calculated risks based on the likelihood of having a suit brought against you, the probability you would lose such a suit, and the cost if you do". For a big company like Disney, mistreating a department of IT workers is very unlikely to be costly.
On the other hand, it does seem like there should be a regulatory body taking action on this sort of abuse, and I'm curious if anyone knows more about that.
"skilled foreign workers are by far the most unfairly discriminated group of people"
I'm sorry, but I have to call bullshit on this. The State has an economic interest in maintaining high(er) levels of employment among citizens, because employed citizens stimulate the economy, while providing financing for public programs, and while not claiming benefits like unemployment. There's a net economic benefit (not to mention a foundational argument for the role of government) in protecting the employment of a country's own citizenry, so it's not like this is done capriciously.
(Also, fun time to point out: Many other countries have the same exact qualifications that protect jobs from citizens being outsourced to other countries. Including India, fittingly.)
Now, contrast that with the idea that a certain segment of the population is systemically disadvantaged based on race, income bracket, or gender. And for the minority of those disadvantaged who actually achieve qualifications that make them a great fit for a job, they still face discrimination in the form of hiring discrimination and wage discrimination. This is all done not based on merit, or as a matter of economic policy by a government, but rather: whether someone happened to be born a certain color or sex.
Really? There's really even a second of argument to be made about which of these scenarios is more insidious and unfair?
EDIT: Also, SERIOUS dog-whistle warning on use of the word "supposedly" to refer to discrimination against women and other minorities.
Your whole argument hinges on an assumption that national borders are somehow relevant in determining which workers are entitled to jobs. You could recast the same argument in terms of races, and it holds up equally well -- reserving jobs for whites protects the employments of a country's own citizenry, black people don't deserve the rights of citizens, women should stay home and not interfere in business, yadda yadda.
You're being ridiculous. People are upset about the treatment of the existing workers, and angry at the management. Nobody's blaming the new incoming workers.
As far as comparing it to replacing people with women or other ethnic minorities; people did complain loudly about Mexicans "taking our jobs" but that has died down in recent years because people have realized how stupid it is to blame the workers.
Let's not muddy the issue with unwarranted claims of bigotry. The problem in this story is the management at Disney mistreating their existing (now former) employees.
The reality is that often times these foreign workers aren't actually "skilled". They're fresh IIT grads who may be intelligent but haven't enough professional experience to avoid costly problems and delays. The suits only care about next quarter's numbers though.
This isn't just classic bigotry recast. The maxim of fairness doesn't extend across political boundaries where cheap foreign labor can siphon money across different economic spheres leaving domestic workers wanting for a job. Actually the whole reason why people object is that isn't fair to have to compete against someone in Bangalore. Displaced workers can't just choose to move to a cheaper country for work.
> Such stories are almost never told with skilled immigrants.
Because the H1B gravy train means they don't have to sneak into the country.
Per Wikipedia, "As of 2008, the alumni of IIT number more than 170,000." I couldn't find any numbers for total class sizes, but I don't think there are hardly enough compared to the outstanding H1-B visas in the US (and then there's e.g. L1 visas).
And as I understand it, more IIT graduates go into programming from degrees in e.g. mechanical and civil? engineering than those who get CS degrees, because that's where the money is.
I think we would all rather see them get green cards instead of visas.
If they had green cards, than they would be free to find better paying jobs or switch jobs. Instead, the H1-B is essentially shackles that ensures an H1-B stays put while they apply for a Green Card. Otherwise they go back to India, that is a BIG disincentive to leave the employer voluntarily ESPECIALLY since they are here by exploiting a loophole as it is.
> I find mainstream hostility towards skilled workers really interesting because if you had replaced this group of people with any other group of people like women or other ethnic minorities, you can really start to see how outright hostile people are.
It's not just that, if the same practices were used in other industries that are traditionally protected (doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers, accountants, etc) or unionized, all hell would break loose. But nobody seems too bothered that this happens to tech workers.
Minorities and women are a protected class under US law- their lower wages are due to previous conditions in the US that the citizens of that country have decided to remedy.
Discrimination against skilled foreign workers is not illegal- in fact laws like H1-B require a certain amount of discrimination.
To compare the situation of H1-Bs to women or blacks or even illegal immigration is at best being willfully ignorant of US history and custom. Get back to me when H1-Bs are forced to pick cotton for a couple generations.
I think so. The fact that skilled immigrants actually are skilled probably helps the notion that skilled immigrants don't need help and doesn't deserve any sympathy.
On the other hand, skilled immigrants often seem completely oblivious to the fact that they are completely being discriminated against. Just like blacks who thinks they are being mistreated simply because of their skin color at birth, and women to their gender at birth, skilled immigrants can perfectly adopt their narrative of mistreatment due to birth location. And yet, they don't. They simply take the world for what it is, and try to win it based on merits. Maybe it's because skilled workers go beyond race and gender, they themselves have a hard time identifying themselves with each others.
This is bullshit. I've heard my international student and immigrant friends play this card very frequently. This is especially obvious when they're talking in a self deprecating way. And you know what? They might not be wrong, and that's okay.
The irony of what you're saying should also not be lost on you. You're claiming that you're discriminated against due to your status as a skilled-immigrant worker, but that nobody in your situation would claim this.
Also it seems like you think that women and African-Americans don't face discrimination in tech? I really have a hard time imagining people making this claim, especially with statistics like:
Men are employed in STEM occupations at about twice the rate of women with the same qualifications. [1]
The number of women graduating with computer science degrees has halved in the last 30 years. [2]
Women are treated as if they don't belong in the field, through sexism or dismissal. [3]
How many women do you see stuck in UI Dev? Have you talked to them? Guess what -- a lot of them hate UI but get stuck in the 'girly' part of CS, especially at the entry level. My fiancee, who graduated with me from a top 10 university with an emphasis in Algorithms and Modeling is now doing web UI... Well payed web UI, but still, definitely not the right fit for her skill set.
My African American friends in tech faced the same sort of discrimination -- the cultural barrier to entry we have in the tech field is pretty bonkers.
I'm not sure I buy the argument that foreign tech workers are at any more of a disadvantage. Skilled foreign workers can eventually move back to India and stretch their dollar way further than it would go in the US. Does the average American tech worker have this option?
> Another part of the immigration story that's fascinating is illegal immigrant stories are almost always come with some sob story to make readers feel empathic towards them.
Not sure I would characterize mine, and millions of others' stories as "sob stories". Economical and safety reasons for moving away from place of origin are realities, not short stories for your soul.
It's because skilled immigrants are being brought over specifically to make large companies richer. That's it. There is no other reason. In 95% of cases, there are plenty of people here that can do the job.
> But critics accused the company of abandoning an employee who had stood for what’s right,
Adria Richards was the one who tried to start a witch hunt by talking photos of the two individuals who were just minding their own business joking around.
Just imagine this. Think of all the jokes you share with your close ones in your private time, off the record. Say one day, a random person suddenly takes photo of you and declare you a racist, sexist, rapist etc for overhearing what's supposed offensive to them. No matter how harmless the joke is, the damage is done. You'll be branded as whatever the person says you are.
Is this the type of behavior we want to promote by saying this is just action? Think really carefully before you defend such action. It can really ruin lives.
Nobody "tried start a witch hunt"; Richards never even accused them of being sexist, let alone tried to get them fired. And they were - exactly as you say - minding their own business.
Absent any 4chan backlash or overreaction by the companies in question, it would have been two dudes cracking tasteless jokes and someone pointing out how she didn't think it was cool. You probably see that on Facebook every day.
The fact that anyone got fired over this is what made this moment infamous.
Publicly shaming someone on twitter isn't trying to start a witch hunt? Maybe it wasn't her intention, but sending that tweet is a knew-or-should-have-known type of situation. I have 6 tweets to my name in 7 years, and even I know how these things go down. Someone innocently or "innocently" mugs for the camera about something they like/don't like and their followers overreact.
> Publicly shaming someone on twitter isn't trying to start a witch hunt?
Publicly shaming someone on twitter isn't necessarily trying to start a witch hunt. Most tweets do not start a witch hunt and it can be quite difficult to predict in advance the size of the reaction to any particular set of comments. Furthermore someone who is regular tweeting and used to sharing inconsequential thoughts has been lulled into a sense of banality since they have many many tweets that don't provoke an over reaction.
> Publicly shaming someone on twitter isn't necessarily trying to start a witch hunt.
"Trying", no. But Twitter is (and has been for a while) The Great Internet Outrage Machine, so I think someone with any level of Twitter chops at all would realize that any public shaming (especially on a hot button topic) would likely result in someone kicking off a witch hunt just because.
I don't think she was trying to start the fire, but she /did/ bring the matches.
edit: and just for clarification, I don't necessarily think her public shaming was wrong, but I do thing the resultant witch hunt was.
My approach to conflict resolution: if you have a problem with someone, you should first approach them privately. If that doesn't work, then bring in someone who is mutually trusted by both parties. If that fails, take the problem to the broader community.
The wider you spread an issue, the less it remains under your control. Turning around and saying semi-privately "could you guys tone it down" means the issue can potentially be resolved immediately, with no fallout, and with nobody knowing beyond those who could already hear the initial comment. Bringing in a couple of conference officials means the issue can potentially be resolved after a short investigation, and that any issues that arise at that time can be de-escalated. Posting to your 9,000 twitter followers means there are 9,000 people all passing judgment in their own way, 9,000 people who have the opportunity to escalate the issue or spread it even wider. It's very hard, once you've put someone's photo and "this person is behaving badly" in front of an audience of thousands, to completely resolve the issue in everyones' minds. It may not have been intended to be a witch hunt, but it had all of the right elements to become one, and it didn't need to.
If I remember the story correctly, part of the backlash was that she didn't point out to them how what they were saying wasn't cool. She went straight to the conference heads, presumably to get the dongle jokers kicked out or reprimanded in some way. And then she further escalated the situation by tweeting and blogging about it.
Now, maybe that was the right way to do it. Maybe it wasn't. And I don't know if she "tried to start a witch hunt." But she did put it into the public sphere. And people reacted.
> Adria Richards was the one who tried to start a witch hunt by talking photos of the two individuals who were just minding their own business joking around.
Adria was complaining on twitter about some sexist jerks. Those jerks are back to work and fine, and Adria is still unhireable for daring to complain about shitty behaviour.
As I recall it was a joke between two men about "forking" a male speaker's repo and the size of said speaker's "dongle." I'm not sure how that's sexist. Crass, yes. Sexist? Please inform me.
> Adria is still unhireable for daring to complain about shitty behaviour
Her job was basically a public relations role ("developer evangelist"), such an incident does a couple of things:
- Destroys any goodwill she had in the developer community.
- Shows that she's ineffective in dealing with public relations.
Also, in the middle of the incident she started using her employer's name to back her actions (e.g. she said that SendGrid "stands behind her)" and I'm pretty sure no one at the company gave her any approval to make such statements. That's another public relations no-no.
Also,
> Adria was complaining on twitter
This isn't exactly true.
1. One of the big reasons it blew up is that she turned it into a blog post on her personal blog.
2. She signed her blog post with "Yesterday the future of programming was on the line and I made myself heard" (though she later removed this from the post). (This Ars Technica article quotes the line[1]).
3. Several times she likened herself to Joan of Arc for making the Twitter post.
I'm not saying that she deserved to have her life ruined, but she had an active role in the initial push that gave this incident greater publicity.
The appropriate response to the mens' jokes is what the PyCon officials did when contacted -- they spoke privately to both of the men who had been joking, the men explained their actions and that they understood how the jokes might have been perceived, and agreed that they'd put a lid on it. That's as far as it should have gone.
The appropriate response to Adria Richards' overreaction and subsequent public-shaming (which violates PyCon's code of conduct) -- and her continued insistence that she did the right thing -- is to remove her from the situation. Until she can own up to the fact that she escalated too far, she shouldn't be a "developer evangelist" at tech conferences, and the rest of us shouldn't trust her judgment when it comes to appropriate public behavior. (I don't think she should be unemployed, just that she shouldn't be working in a public-facing position.)
And, I heartily agree. I can imagine the 2 guys cracking jokes, meaning no offense. Just happens, that in this country, violence and gruesome details are acceptable, but sexual innuendo are evil. Thank puritanical beginnings for this country, I guess.
The appropriate response is, "Hey guys, your sex jokes are disrupting peoples' concentration. Can you quiet them please?" And if they don't, ask them to leave. We're all mature here, or should be.
But that all goes to naught when the hivemind on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and the like take hold. It doesn't matter if it's false. Doesn't matter if it's been photoshopped. All that matters is someone poked a stick in the hornet's nest, and the sting means you lose your job, your income, your name, and your way of life.
So, instead of modding on the cuff, tell me an appropriate response to an accusation of this manner.
There's something to be said to not post things on Social Media. Unfortunately for the 2 guys at PyCon, even that would not have helped them, as it was posted on someone else's social media account. So, how does one challenge a he-said/she-said in the time of Youtube/Twitter judgements?
You comment deserves a down vote. Apparently you believe in mob rule, and that the first person to publicly state something is correct. There are bullies on both sides of every issue, and recognizing that is the first step towards progress.
Except that much of what makes the death penalty expensive, the lengthy appeals process, is to counteract the risk of a false conviction. You can't not pay that price unless you're willing to accept a higher false conviction rate and therefore more folks wrongfully killed by the state.
"The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health has purchased advertisements to accompany this series. While CAMH professionals are quoted in this story, the organization had no involvement in the creation or production of this, or any other, story in the series."
What I can surmise from this article is basically that most Canadian therapists want the high steady income like medical doctors.
That's exactly it. I'm the cofounder of online therapy company iCouch and the number 1 problem I hear about among therapists: getting and retaining clients. Primary care doctors don't have that problem. It isn't because of lack of funding, at least not in the United States because nearly all health insurance plans cover some number of yearly visits to a mental health practitioner. The problem is that there is a certain percentage of the therapy/mental health profession that engages in unscientific quackery which diminishes the perceived value of the other percentage of professionals who practice science-based mental health care. There are licensed practitioners who are often little more than faith healers; there aren't actually any standards of care for mental health. Of course there are license requirements, but there isn't really an "FDA approved" method of therapy to treat depression; so there gets to be a lot of problems with clients actually NOT benefitting from a particular therapist.
It's pretty much certain that if you went to a licensed family doctor with a sore throat that you'd get treatment that would likely cure the sore throat. If it were a bacterial infection (i.e. Strep,) then you'd be prescribed an appropriate anti-biotic. If it were viral, there's be treatment for the symptoms and in a few days, the problem would be cured. If you went to a licensed therapist for anxiety treatment, there's a likelihood that they'd attempt whatever "method" they've "developed" to "treat" the problem yet without any accountability in terms of if their approach actually is based on the scientific literature or it is was just based on some applied wishful thinking. It's also interesting that you'll have psychoanalysts spending YEARS with a client while a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist (CBT) often gets measurable results in a few sessions. Obviously every person is different, but how can a payer (insurance) justify spending years paying a psychoanalysts when CBT works (especially for things like anxiety disorders) [1].
I have psychoanalysts violently disagreeing about CBT effectiveness, but then again, if they admitted to the evidence supporting CBT for anxiety, then they'd cause a substantial problem with their own credibility and desire for a client to see them every week for years (such as in your typical Woody Allen film.)
The point is that there needs to be treatment protocols that are standardized within mental health (especially in the non-Psychiatric side of things.) Without standardized protocols, a client could be "depressed" as long as a therapist can convince them that they're still depressed.
That's a dark side of this business. I'm deep in this business with iCouch -- I've seen this stuff up close for over 5 years; in fact it was one of the reasons we started the company, was to try and bring some improvements to the field. But it's like trying to move a glacier uphill!
Immigration reform for skilled workers will almost certainly not happen as long as Democrats continue to lump in amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants in the same immigration reform bill.
This might not be a popular opinion to spout, but I can't see it any other way. These illegals will almost certainly vote for Democrats. How do you expect Republicans to cooperate to welcome educated workers when you are expecting Republicans to commit political suicide?
US as a whole will hugely benefit from making the immigration process easier for educated workers like many other countries have done (Canada, UK, Germany, Australia etc), but this doesn't seem possible under current political climate.
I think by far, the worst affected group is the Indians (and a close second, Chinese, Mexicans, and Filipinos). For a politician, from a macroeconomic perspective, it doesn't make sense to put these arbitrary bureaucratic roadblocks. There was an excellent write-up in this week's Economist on one section of the skilled immigration: Indian immigrants. http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21651331-india-...
Quoth:
Indians in America are the most promising. They are increasingly prominent in tech companies, on Wall Street and in government, especially in the state department. Around 1% of America’s population, over 3.3m people, are “Asian Indians”. Perhaps 150,000 more arrive each year, and 90% of them stay permanently. Devesh Kapur, who has studied them, talks of a “flood”. He says over half of all Indian-born people in America arrived there after 2000.
From a macroeconomic value addition perspective, this is an enormous tax base which also skews social indicators upwards.
This is an "elite" vs common person fight. Bush 2 and Jeb Bush are for amnesty. That being said from a purely political decision supporting amnesty is generally a loser for Republicans. Their business donors want it but vote wise it seems dumb.
Is there much evidence that non citizens are participating in US elections? I'm sure there are a few people doing it illegally, I mean evidence of 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 or millions or whatever it might be.
No, but he's referring to the eventual consequences of an amnesty for illegal immigrants, which would convert them to legal green card holders. After five years of permanent residency, you can naturalize and vote.
He probably should've written 'these former illegals' to be clearer.
Except for the fact that illegals don't vote, you are right. The problem is that is more politically profitable to keep "immigration as an issue" than to actually work in "The People's" best interests.
Democrats don't want to lose the image of being the welcoming mother, Republicans don't want to lose the image of being the strict but principled father. An immigration law that was based on qualification and possible economic boost by immigrant doesn't help any of them.
Basically this was why I left the US after almost 5 years.
I wouldn't give too much credit to the Republicans here. They aren't interested in immigration reform so much as they are interested in expanding the H1-B program limits as part of their corporate welfare agenda.
I agree with your last statement but I don't think there is any political group who is advocating for making the immigration process easier for educated workers.
What is actually bad about Google's "corporate mass surveillance"?
It sure sounds scary, but when I actually try to think about what it is actually bad about it, I can't really think of any.
Every single user Google got, they signed up voluntarily. Google never forced anyone to sign up for their services.
Google attempts to learn about its users just like every other companies. It's just that Google does it so much better than others. Do you get the label "corporate mass surveillance", when the company becomes so good learning about its users?
When I started using Google services many years ago, it definitely didn't occur to me they could basically track you across half the web. And you don't really get much of a choice in the matter. You can actively try to avoid Google sites and they're probably not missing out on a ton.
But more importantly, my grandmother certainly doesn't have any idea what they're doing.
And to be honest, I'm not much better off. So hard to consent to something if I'm not even sure what all they're gathering, and what they're doing with it.
"You can actively try to avoid Google sites and they're probably not missing out on a ton."
Just expanding on your point here, but of course actively avoiding Google's sites isn't nearly enough -- unless you take very specific steps to block Google Analytics callbacks, Google is going to know virtually everything you do on the web whether or not you ever use them for search or go directly to any sites they own.
>But more importantly, my grandmother certainly doesn't have any idea what they're doing.
Great point. Users are strongly encouraged to create a Google account when they setup a new Android device, and I suspect a significant portion have little-to-no idea about how their data is used.
I believe you are supposed to read and agree the terms of an agreement when doing that. 99.9% of the people dont even read the TOS.Who is to blame ? the user or the corporation ? I think both parties own a bit of the problem.
The fact that you managed to get people to go along voluntarily with something harmful to them by presenting it as something benign does not make your actions ultimately benign.
And yes, there comes a point where simple observation crosses the line. This is generally recognized by society. If I take a picture on the street and a particular person happens to be in it, that is generally OK. Most people wouldn't look askance at that. If I take a picture of the same person through their bedroom window, I'm liable to be arrested and labeled a creep. The specifics of information-gathering matter very much to how OK it is in terms of social acceptance.
It seems like most are ok with harassment and discrimination against Eich simply citing exercise of free speech. But if one-tenth of what happened to Eich had happened to someone with different sexuality or female, people would cry harassment and discrimination. Why is it ok for Eich to get huge backlashes, harassments and character assassination? I fully support same sex marriage, but I feel like treating Eich like this was too far.
If it weren't for double standards, most people wouldn't have any standards at all.
All you have to do is look at all the public figures who express views, and act on them in much more thorough ways, who get a free pass. Look at the all the famous Hollywood types with very sketchy behaviors in their backgrounds. Look at politicians as well, where it's even easier to find skeletons. Eich has been held to a standard that a whole lot of people in public life, CEOs, politicians, movie stars, sports heroes, would not live up to. Do we now move on to all of them?
The biggest problem I have with this situation is not that it happened to Eich, but that the mob has been so selective. There are plenty of people in the public life who have done far more than donate $1000 to a state referendum that, let's not forget, was popular enough to pass in one of the most liberal states in the Union, but haven't been hounded out their jobs for it.
All the folks celebrating that a moral victory has been won with Mozilla ought to consider what happens if this considerable power is put to an evil use, or a use for which they personally find objectionable. Don't think it can't happen. 100 years ago, Fascism was the big thing because it allowed the leaders to Get Things Done, and in fact, many good things were done in that era by dictators with tremendous power to make sweeping changes. But some other stuff happened, too.
Of course, I'm speaking in a political climate where I heard many people state in 2009 that they wished President Obama weren't limited by the Constitution so he could _really_ fix things. I've never heard such a frightening thought from an American in my life, yet I heard it from a number of people back when the President was elected. That isn't a political thing either, because it would scare me equally no matter who the person was talking about. Sure, I don't like President Obama, but I wouldn't want that kind of power in the hands of someone who was the combined reincarnation of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Gandhi, Winston Churchill, and the Buddha himself either.
If we are living in a country where people are that ignorant of history and of human nature, then this society isn't long for the world anyway.
Maybe the tide is changing and this the start of a new era of populist activism. I guess you have nothing to worry about as long as you hold popular opinions... and, of course, those _never_ change.
Mob rule is a powerful thing and genies never go back in the bottle after they've been let out.
Free speech does not mean, and has never meant, freedom from social consequence. The Constitution does not say that you can do and say whatever you want and other people can't have opinions about it.
Eich paid good money in an attempt to restrict how people in Mozilla's home state live their lives — some of them even Mozilla employees. He expressed no regret for doing so, then became CEO of Mozilla, a company that virtually defines itself by freedom and inclusion.
There were myriad ways he could've attempted to resolve this, and he did precisely none of them. That he would rather give up the job entirely speaks volumes about what he finds important.
This Dev Bootcamp phenomenon negatively affects Ruby and Ruby on Rails community disproportionately more than any other. I think pretty much all these training courses sell Ruby on Rails as the goto platform to learn. If this trend continues, Rails will be where PHP is now (no offence to smart people doing PHP, but you know what I mean).
Ruby/Ruby on Rails community isn't new to dealing with other people bad mouthing them. Remember Zed Shaw declaring "Rails Is A Ghetto" (http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/ruby/rails/is-a-ghetto) in 2007? Despite many haters, Rails penetrated through Java/.NET duopoly, and it has gained a lot of respect since then. All the bad mouthing didn't matter back then. Rails had so many talented people. Really smart people were coming from Java and .NET world into Rails and some of them were very passionate about making the technology better. This trends is on a notable decline now.
These Yelp reviews mean very little to be honest. What kind of an idiot would write a bad review when
1. Writing bad review of the code training you got basically admits to others that your skills as a programmer is poor.
2. You risk souring interpersonal relationship you might have built going to the program. When you say the code training you got at X is bad, you are actually telling potential employers that people who got training from X are also bad. Who writes in their grad school application that they got trained in Kaplan?
Edit: As pointed out below, this isn't a comparable institution. However, I think we can empirically test the question "Will students offer bad yelp reviews to schools that are their primary credential?" The answer seems to be yes:
When trying to get a job an interviewer could possibly see a bad review that a student left of your school and assume that means the student may not have the skills necessary for the job. Also, presumably at your school as students and instructors are interacting personal relationships are being developed (ie. networking) which could be beneficial in finding a job. If the student then gives a bad review of the school it could burn the bridges that they built while in the class.
On the other hand, when someone is grading a standardized test, they grade based on how you answered the test questions. They don't do an internet search to see what kind of preparation you had for the test. It's different than a job interview because a test is judging what skills and knowledge you are demonstrating at that point in time, whereas a job interview is judging both where you are at now and what you will be able to do in the future. Also, hopefully in a test prep class there is no direct advantage to be gained by networking as that would defeat the purpose of the test.
I don't think Kaplan is relevant from a credentials or networking standpoint. (My understanding is that it should help you get into a school based on how your score improves on a test rather than offering direct social signaling.)
Is this pithy URL meant as a rebuttal to your parent's point? I assure you, it isn't.
Kaplan and devbootcamps might share some similarities, but they are qualitatively different when it comes to their value propositions for students and how that value is derived.
Kaplan is meant to boost scores on an objective test and that is where the value is. They either succeed or they fail for each student. There is no consideration of Kaplan by the institutions proctoring these tests or the institutions accepting these scores as a metric. The boost to test scores is not tied to the social reputation of Kaplan and so they are free to speak out against Kaplan if they are dissatisfied and that dissatisfaction, rather than some sort of conception of social good-doing in warning others, may even be the incentive that spurs them to do so.
Devbootcamps are meant for students to be a quick way to gain entry into a field suffering for want of code monkeys. The value here is in the job placement, not in the education or boosting of knowledge. The ability for students to be placed in jobs is actually largely a function of the social standing and reputation of the devbootcamp and not in the merits of the individual's education attained there. So all parties involved: founders, instructors, and students as well as the "in" at the companies that hire these newly-minted code monkeys have the same incentive at keeping up the reputation of the school.
The "in" at the hiring companies may quietly pivot away from using devbootcamps as a source for employment if dissatisfied with the code monkeys attained, but will never speak publicly about their missteps in sourcing code monkeys from them. They have no incentive to and every incentive (personal reputation in career, nothing to gain by burning bridges with the school and students, etc.)
Students, even if they feel they didn't learn much or were not truly prepared for employment, won't voice this because the ongoing value of the sunk cost of their time and money relies upon a favorable impression of the devbootcamp and its students.
The founders and the instructors reasons for not speaking out against what they are doing is clear and I won't elaborate on it.
This girl not only became a competent front end developer in 100 days, but looking at the Gemfile, she knows how to use capistrano, redis, capistrano, paperclip, omniauth and devise?
She knows the best practices for Rails perfectly. She not only grasped to use MVC perfectly, but also organized asset codes perfectly in like 50 days.
I forgot to mention that she knew Rails from like day 1.
Additionally, she knew better to hide sensitive information about secret tokens for maybe AWS in the config folder and other Rails environment info.
Really? Is Hacker News this gullible? If you really want to see what actual beginner struggle with for 10 hours a day, go take a look at StackOverflow. Beginners are struggling for hours to create hoverover effects and persistent footer.
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Edit 1.
While rereading this blog post, I found that she made the first simple Rails app on day 69. So who was it that set up all the Rails dev environment for her starting day 1. I don't understand why she still wouldn't disclose how someone else helped her.
Not so gullible so as to take to heart what you're saying, considering that you created your account solely to deride her. Here we are, 70 days after your account was created, and yet you've only posted 1 comment that wasn't negatively criticizing her? And your only argument is a copy/paste of your original complaint from 70 days ago, all based off of source-control introspection?
I don't care if what you're saying is true or not, I think your behavior (an apparent personal vendetta) is the only sad thing here.
Please consider that the comment in question is a verbatim copy/paste from the previous time it was brought it up. If you want to consider spamming the same comment over multiple threads as valid discussion, by all means, have at it.
However, everything they brought up was already addressed 70 days ago. To be honest, petea raises a valid concern, and I certainly don't want to be party to shills or other types of fraudulent or deceptive activities, but considering that petea didn't even put forth the effort to further refine or follow-up on their original argument (especially given 70 additional data points [sites] with which to draw evidence from), then that signals to me that they have motivations beyond what meets the eye.
That's a pretty massive jump in coding proficiency in a delta of one day.
This has nothing to do with marginalizing skill, it just seems like there was some outside help here, and that should probably be credited.
edit: I see a lot of different indent patterns on the JS as well. That kind of points me towards n different coders with at least two different text editor configs, or a good deal of copy->paste from SO.
This is pretty much a given. The delta from days 8 and 9 is "learned how to use named functions, learned that jQuery has plugins". That's not that much of a leap, but of course any student is going to be using external resources. You might notice that her goal was "make websites", not "hand-code everything".
This is how everyone learns. Copy-paste some code in without understanding it, watch it break, figure out how to fix it, repeat.
Pretty much everyone is guilty of using outside resources. She explains in her blog post that she used a lot of Google, SO, etc. Maybe she doesn't give exact citations for every piece of code she uses/takes inspiration from, but no one really does.
I don't think it's helpful to speculate as to whether she had someone in particular helping her throughout the lifetime of her project.
I suspect that if a similar project were done by a male, no one would question if it was a solo venture or not. I think the fact that Jennifer is a woman makes people suspicious enough to inspect the code and say things like, "it just seems like there was some outside help".
Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't. It's as disprovable as it would be if Jennifer was a man instead of a woman, yet only a woman would get called out on it.
I know I shouldn't even get involved here, but I looked at day 8 vs day 9 very carefully and day 9 clearly builds on day 8 (e.g. the disableSelection code is carried over). The indentation that bothers you is feature testing code cut-and-paste from http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.cssHooks/. The additional JS code for the ball animation is totally reasonable for someone to learn and implement in a short time.
I wrote simple learning programs along these lines in C and Java in the 1990s. I didn't have a web page to publish my progress on then, but once I got to the point of being able to create ANY graphics in Java, I can readily imagine myself moving from that to the bouncing ball sort of thing in a day of concentrated effort.
So that alone doesn't suggest to me anything deceptive afoot.
I doubt my indentation patterns were very consistent at first either. :-) Especially if I was learning from one book on one day and another book on another day.
You think it's a massive jump? I'm pretty sure a novice programmer could go from one to the other spending a full day on it, especially with the help of SO or tutorials. 8 hours is a lot of time if you are focused.
lol, well, maybe she is a 10x in the making and you are not! just because something will take you 200 days doesn't mean it will take other's the same amount of time.
She is dating Aaron O'Connell, one of the technical co-founders of 42Floors. So, she may have been fortunate enough to have someone coach her along the way and unblock her when needed. Irrespective of that, I still think this is an impressive accomplishment in its own right. How many seasoned developers do we know that can execute at this pace for so long?
There's no conspiracy, 42Floors just shares the HN blog post links internally and gets people to upvote them. You only need a few quick upvotes to hit the front page, and having a few 42Floors employees vote up 42Floors content is more than enough.
The 42Floors blogposts are generally good quality too, so nobody has any reason to flag them, and they're generally on topic and somewhat interesting, like this one.
I guess it would, but I don't know how you'd get around it. If I were to post something on HN that was of interest to friend A, then sending him a link to the HN comments seems like the natural thing to do. Friend A would then probably upvote that article. So I've just created a mini-voting ring.
I'm pretty sure any company featured on HN (eg RethinkDB or any other) would send a link to the comments on HN if their product was being discussed here, and most employees would then upvote it.
It is a voting ring, but it's probably not done maliciously and it's just how HN works, I guess.
slava @ rethink here. Our team is really small. Even if everyone upvoted our stories (they don't -- many people don't even have HN accounts), it would only account for 5-10% of the upvotes; less for some of the more popular stories. The same is probably true for 42 floors. I find that their blog posts are quite good.
I suspect the "friendly upvote effect" has a lot to do with getting to the front page (which admittedly is important), but that doesn't make up for low quality content.
What next? Send out internal emails saying "Hey, the company has just posted a new blog, but you don't need the actual link, instead just use the HackerNews one, or maybe this Reddit one..."
Let's not have another semantic argument (hacking vs cracking), the term "girl" (and the term "boy" for that matter) has both the meanings of an child of the given gender but also the informal friendly meaning for an adult of that gender.
For example "lets check with the (boys|girls)" is a pretty common usage casual usage of the term for adults, especially in the 18-35 age bracket. The term boy is actually very common in uniformed occupations (military, police, etc).
Depending on the context using "women" implies a level of formality and abstraction that some could find more offensive. So whatever word gets chosen carries some risk of offence, but it's best not to get hung up on subtitles especially when so many people are non-native english speakers.
Girl has an "immature, not yet an adult" connotation. "Guy" wasn't the only option here. It could easily have read "This woman not only became a competent front end developer..."
Well done on your journey, very impressive! It's an inspiration for many of us.
You replied about the use of "girl" (and I agree, "person" would be best here), but why not reply to petea's original comment where he criticizes you? Every time your blog makes it to front page on HN, I notice you're active in the comment thread but you don't reply to the criticism. Why not? It would quickly put an end to these type of comments. I think ignoring the criticism does more harm than the truth about whether or not you received help from others or you started the challenge with some basic knowledge.
Thanks for the input, but not all online communities are the same. HN doesn't have the greatest community, but it's better than most.
The question keeps appearing every time Jennifer's story makes the front page. If it was answered, the answer can be easily linked to any time the question pops up in the future.
What does she possibly have to gain by responding to such crticism? Regardless of the situation, her best move is to ignore it and move on with her life.
Alternatively, what does she have to lose by responding to the criticism and then moving on with her life?
While her accomplishment is very inspirational, it can also act as a disincentive to many who feel discouraged or stupid after having failed on much simpler beginner tasks. This can change depending on her answer to the criticism.
BTW this project is now a significant part of her life. It got a lot of attention and most people will know her because of the accomplishment. It'll be difficult to quickly move on from it - I'm sure the project will pop up in conversation with her, years from now, along with the same questions.
Whether she responds to the criticism or not, it's been exciting seeing her make progress and complete her goal. I wish her all the best.
What? Calling grown women "girls" is even more anachronistic. Seriously, the one-word pronoun "She" would have worked much better in the original sentence.
That's what I was thinking too, the female equivalent of guy is gal. I've seen other people suggest "person" but that sounds stiff. I say we just use "individual" or "particular individual."
She mentions specifically the Ruby on Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl. This tutorial has a section on creating secret tokens within the first three chapters (while leaving in-depth discussion of it for later chapters), and starts discussing concepts like MVC and setting up a development environment in the first chapter.
I'm working through the same tutorial myself, so I see no reason to doubt that it is entirely possible to set up a rails dev environment and get started in a single day.
I would also argue she is in fact disclosing how "someone else" helped her -- "...sites like Stack Overflow, MDN, CSS Tricks, blogs and demos. I also used some great online tutorials". Using these resources is to me no different than having your experienced developer friend sit next to you. Probably better, in some cases.
I remember looking at her first few sites and witnessing a big jump somewhere and immediately thought this is all a promotional event to be hired. She was probably helped, or already had generated a lot of the code, or whatever.
I don't think its controversial or argumentative to say its probably faked to a degree.
Not to mention she uses git, which is not a trivial tool. I don't see many total beginners adopting it. A beginner usually just wants to learn how to develop before diving in and learning the complexities of version control.
While I don't think you're trying to discredit her, I definitely think there was someone helping her and coaching her. I don't think that makes her effort any less important, but I think it'd make sense to at the very least acknowledge it.
Isn't an important part of learning well finding a coach, a mentor? Evidently she was able to do that. Also, by taking the advice, she demonstrated flexibility. The fact that she did what she did also demonstrates perseverance. Damn, I wish I could get her on my team.
I don't think you can determine knowledge of things like Paperclip like this by looking at a repo. I used Paperclip once. Just follow a tutorial. Boom. Done. Looking at my repo you'd assume I just knew it too. Like others have brought up as well, women are even more likely to get help from others than guys who think they have to do everything themselves for better or worse, so there can be live tutors involved as well.
Most of that stuff really isn't that hard. I learned a bunch of that stuff on my own, and I've been spending less than 10 hours a week on it. Surf HN and a few Reddit boards related to coding and Rails, and you'll pick up stuff like that. I first read that the secret_token.rb file does not belong in source control in some thread on here or r/programming.
Not that it would be that tough to figure out - the name kinda invites googling, where the first few results will tell you what you need to know.
Not true. The most obvious example of a man embarking on a similar project - which people did care about - was Jonathan Coulton, who rose to fame at least partially thanks to his "thing a week" project and the output from that.
Jayenkai's "Game A Week" project (male dev) has also attracted quite a bit of press.
If you actually take the maxim of fairness and equality seriously, skilled foreign workers are by far the most unfairly discriminated group of people. Much more than blacks and women who are supposedly discriminated against in tech. Unlike women and blacks, skilled foreign workers actually have the government with arbitrary set of standards to determine who can work and who can't.
Another part of the immigration story that's fascinating is illegal immigrant stories are almost always come with some sob story to make readers feel empathic towards them. Such stories are almost never told with skilled immigrants.