true, i'm not even sure i do either tbh. i was just taking OP's word that it's true where he works, and it seemed plausible to me that it was true at big companies...

Random rant: when is Hollywood ever going to start getting it?

It's 2016 and I'm actually sitting here thinking about re-subscribing to Netflix's physical disc delivery because it's so hard to watch decent movies online (legally). For so many new-ish releases from the last couple years, your options are
a.) hope it makes its way to whatever streaming service you subscribe to (HBO, Netflix, whatever)
b.) pay $15 to permanently buy a digital copy of a movie you will most likely just watch once, get the **** out with that ****

Some movies can be rented on Amazon/Youtube for like $5, but the selection isn't the best because for a lot of movies I guess the studio just doesn't want to offer that option. The technology is here to deliver a great movie rental experience online (when I do rent a movie like that, it works great, zero complaints), but these backwards ****ing movie companies don't want to let it happen, for some idiotic reason they're cool with sending discs in the ****ing mail still being the best option to see their ****.

Yeah, cant even count on my hands the amount of times in the last year I have sat down with someone looking for X movie on online rental sites to find its only available for digital purchase. Who has ever used digital purchase for a movie anyways?

I guess opinions vary on how skeezy this is, but a lot of movies (and shows) that are not available on Netflix Streaming in the US *are* available in other countries, and with a proxy, you can watch them. I found this out when I was visiting England a few years back.

YMMV but I can only remember one movie I couldn't rent on Apple, and it was because the rental price was 10 bucks. This wasn't a block buster either, it was some hooligan hockey movie that I felt bad about renting when the price came down. Just like when movies where objects, I own the ones I know I'm going to watch again so I can keep then on my giant iPad.

I know one was the avengers on prime. Can't remember the others

How much would you guys pay for the every-movie-ever streaming Netflix? I'd probably go $30. Is that enough ?

both through Apple and Youtube rentals I've paid for the HD version of a movie and when I tried playing them on an HD tv get the "can't play HD on this device".

The movie/dvd industry is one of the more annoying examples of out of touch rich old people being so greedy and ignorant that it hurts everyone.

I do think nearly every studio (TV and Movie) is leaving money on the table because they're afraid of leaving money on the table. I don't know which amount being left is greater so I don't know if they're wrong or not.

Netflix is doing a fantastic job at convincing people that they don't need to watch what they want to watch (and should watch what Netflix has instead) but man, the cable channels are fighting hard too, with nearly every big traditional movie channel having hit series after hit series.

TV wise at least one nice thing seems to have cemented itself in the mind of producers and consumers: stuff you pay for (is/has to be) better than stuff you'll put up with commericals to watch for free

I don't have a lot of time for TV, but still I watch plenty, and there are more shows I've heard of that I think I'd like than I have time for.

If you're an American, don't forget you guys are in the premier top-tier market for such services. VAST amounts of money are being left on the table. A quick glance at "latest releases to rent" on my countries premier service - Independence Day 2, Central Intelligence, X-Men Apocalypse, Warcraft and so on. Basically ancient, and will have watched already a long time ago if I had any interest. Ridiculous to expect payment of £14 ($17) to RENT a (likely poorly encoded) HD stream of ID4:2 5 months after it's cinema release.

Of course it's possible sales are carried by a small number of whales, and this is the optimal strategy I guess.

As far as pricing goes, you generally have 2 options :

1) Sell your product at a low cost that will entice many consumers to purchase it
2) Sell your product at a high cost that very few consumers will purchase

Media producers tend to go with option 2. Netflix has gone with option 1.

Option 3). Sell your product at a high cost, throw your resources for exposure at that price-point, AND have channels to sell your product at a lower cost.

You still catch whales, you inflate the perceived value of your product.

Isn't this how the recording industry, at least to some extent, is right now? And early 2000s they were fighting hard to do what the movie industry is trying to do now.

Movie industry has that too. Just go to $5 matinees you peasants.

Never really post here, but figure I'd drop this PSA: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/u...tm_medium=Link

basically you can get a large bundle of O'Reilly books related to Unix for whatever you feel like paying.

Two-parter:

For address resolution protocol (ARP) how big is the header for a request (a) and a reply (b)? I cant find the answer. I assume they mean how many bits.

28 bytes for both is what I came up with.

so (a) == (b) == 224 methinks.

if anyone finds different plz let me know!

Well, I slept on this for about 2 weeks and this is what I came up. You asked for something more uh, large scale and I realized that I'm probably a decent enumerator for this. (still data point of one person)

It's no secret that I've been struggling to find work and for the sake of these kinds of discussions, I really wish I kept data of my search, but I'll try out a few fuzzy numbers that are reasonable.

I've been looking for 4 or 5 years (but I'll just say 4) and have applied to about 20 positions a week.

50 weeks * 4 years * 20 applies = 4,000 jobs total.

I've been contacted by about 1 recruiter per week:

50 weeks * 4 years = 200 jobs.

Since recruiter count is messed up because there are a lot of duplicate queries, I'll toss it out entirely, with the caveat that the following point still stands:

I could probably count on ONE HAND how many times I've applied to or interviewed jobs that are too far above my ability, which happened by accident or bad recruiter information (9 out of 10 times, the recruiters way overstate the actual requirements). This trend expands to three cities: Los Angeles, Austin, San Francisco. I definitely remember these interviews because I felt absolutely horrible after going through the phone calls (I got cursed out a few times).

The question is "Am I totally unskilled?" I beg to differ, but I'll try some points:

First off, I have only been interviewed for a small amount of entry-level jobs. More often than not, I am considered for mid / senior level jobs, usually through some sort of up-sell to a different position I applied for (the missing skill is always my lack of experience). Usually, I get straight-out denied for entry level jobs.

Many of these "mid level" jobs, which I'm sorry to say are stupid simple, go unfilled. I've actually been turned down many times because the company was afraid I'd get bored and leave in 2 months, only to get called by recruiters for the same job for months on end.

On the other extreme, there is a legit skills shortage, but I think companies are overstating this issue. If every company sat on its hands and cried about "no skills" then we wouldn't have a Google, Facebook, Uber, or any other company that had to figure out how to scale to Petaflops per minute. There would have been no one with these skills 10 years ago because these kinds of demands and jobs didn't even exist yet. Hell, we wouldn't have any Android or Apple apps today if "no skills" was such a massive issue that it is stalling out our entire country.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Companies in SF are surrounded by Stanford, Berkeley, with hordes of people wanting to relocate there from MIT, UT, UCLA, etc, If they are really having problems finding skilled applicants, then there is some major issues with either the schooling (from top 10 schools no less) or the employers are just too risk averse, or prospective employees aren't showing that they are capable of learning what they need to learn in quick time to achieve whatever crazy lofty goals a company has.

I'm not entirely sure if the companies are wanting to go on a vision quest or what they want, but they need to define this better. If they only say there is a "skills shortage," they need to be able to describe it in tangible words, because general terms doesn't mean anything and they can't demand schools teach some quasi needs that aren't defined at all, but if these schools are failing to teach kids how to learn stuff they never seen or considered before, then I suppose that could be a failing of our schools, but I'm not entirely sure. But, honestly, I've never seen a precise list of what skills are missing in the tech world and that would be a great place to start.

I stand by my my reluctant entrepreneur statement simply because I personally never had an in depth discussion with a business owner who actually intended to go into business (and this includes tech founders). The type that grows up selling lemonade on the street is a mighty rare case (observation: never seen a lemonade stand).

"skilled" isn't a binary value. It's a spectrum. It's quite possible that there is a shortage of people for one section of the spectrum and not for others.

I'll also add that my read on you (which is obviously not super informed) is that your issues finding jobs aren't really skill issues.

I'm not really sure what this means. Again, we're not talking about literally nobody has the skills companies are looking for. We're talking about not being able to find *enough*. This type of argument is fundamentally flawed. If we had twice as many skilled people maybe we'd have Google, Facebook, Uber and a bunch of other companies that weren't able to succeed in this environment. If we had half as many skilled people maybe we'd have just Google and Facebook. Your argument could be made in any of these alternate timelines so it doesn't really tell us much.


Again, the issue isn't that there are no skilled applicants. There's no reason to assume that a shortage is tied to any of the issues you mentioned.

You can start with looking at the positions that are being filled by H1-B and TN workers at the big-name tech companies.

I've seen many lemonade stands. I'd say I see 1-2 every year. But I live in Canada, so maybe we just appreciate the nice days more. I also see lots of kids going door-to-door offering to shovel driveways, do yard work, etc.

I still don't really understand your reluctant entrepreneur statement though. Is it just you've never talked to someone that gave up a good job to start their own business?

I mean Google and Facebook are literally hoarding talent just so others can't have it. That implies that there is some amount of shortage but that it may be artificially created.

I'm basically on the bench now at my company. It sucks. I wouldn't wish it on any developer who loves what they do.

I was for a while at my last job and it was the most boring thing ever so I echo your sentiments

FWIW I think a spike in economic growth will create shortages/make their need for more acute in developer talent. I have my resume out on Dice and Indeed, I am getting 5+ calls a day on most days for the past month. Rates need to come up but Inam sure they will.

But how many of those calls are for full time roles versus contracts?

I get that it's a continuum with a lot of variables. I would like to preface that I don't have a real opinion on the H1B debate. Unfortunately, I don't really know what they are being used for either, and what I can find seems too politically charged for my taste. It seems possible to me that more "entry level" positions will be filled with H1B's in places like, Nashville, Tennessee than places like San Francisco, simply because more Americans would rather move to California, and foreigners only care about moving to America.

I don't have a sense of what the minimum ideal of "skilled" means, and I don't think that it is a black and white issue. As someone who has interviewed for quite a few "high demand; hard-to-fill" positions, I can honestly say that very few of the people who interviewed me had any sense of what they were looking for in the first place, and they were totally ignorant of the domains they are asking to fill. I'd say about 15% of people interviewing for data and database positions have any clue about this stuff, and it is hard for me to believe they are able to assess what skills are missing, which isn't a good sign. This actually falls under other roles, covering things like Python, Clojure, etc, though to be fair, the people who generally interview for these roles are more likely to be domain experts, so this number is much closer to 90%, I suppose.

The same goes for skills that are needed but no one can truly define, which covers the scope of whatever future places like Google et.al. needed 10 years ago. How does one assess if someone in skilled in areas that are brand new or unheard of? My naive answer is, if someone went to CalTech, they are more likely to be able to figure it out than someone who with to some backwater community college, and here, I question what the H1B who went to wherever has above the locals.

With my 4000 number, I'm talking about positions that, as far as I can tell, have a low entry of barrier. If these are really not able to be filled, there is a problem somewhere, but I'm not entirely sure where.

There has to a baseline definition of "skilled." No doubt you've met a lot of professional programmers who, if you had to wager, would need to wait for IT to come in every morning to turn on their computers, would choke if they had to do any work that didn't involve a ton of mouse-clicking, and would tip over if they had to ever open up the command line. If the minimum base is that low, then it stands to reason that everyone above this low barrier should have some skills someones somewhere needs, or at the least, there is a misguided barrier to entry somewhere (trying not to be over judgmental here, but just saying).

In simple terms, I think the idea of missing skills assumes an efficient market. I think everyone can agree that there is no efficient market, so the outcome can't align with the antecedent.

I think that outside of truly extreme examples I don't care write about, people are people. I'm hardly someone that people in my day to day call unkind, rude, mean, or any other bad adjective. Perhaps I'm utterly naive and have no clue what I'm competing with, but I don't think that makes me a terrible person. I've always assumed that, given 5 people, I'll always be around #3, which is basically a "no." Endless Peter Principal.

Right, but I'm struggling to understand how skills are assessed. I don't care if Google and Facebook are hoarding all the talent. If people want to work there, that is their prerogative, and if Google / FB / etc took the risk and invested their money upfront on wild cards and succeeded, they should absolutely be reaping the rewards.

But the ideas of map / reduce, sparse matrices, and marriage problems are hardly anything new. This stuff goes back to the 1960s. I'm not understating the challenges of implementation here, just considering the thought that there are possibly people who scaled up from some zero in the 1990s and then where able to grow their knowledge with a smaller risk than I'm assuming at the moment.

(take note I'm picking an arbitrary first step point here. I could be talking about building web pages in 1990, building iPhone apps in 2007, or whatever other zero day example is pertinent)

No, I never met someone who just left a good paying job to simply follow their passion.

this is your problem

why focus on databases?

The types of places that need database experts are probably suit and tie tightasses with clueless HR policies that disqualify you as soon as they see you don't have x years of relevant experience and a degree.

Stop trying to out hipster the hipsters and just learn frontend js like everyone else. No company looking for a greybeard database guru is ever going to hire you.