Posted on 12/26/2002 9:38:29 AM PST by FlyingA
Right, working 80+ hour weeks, skipping holidays, the zero family life isn't enough.
Hey, maybe I'll become a multinational shill and dish out the same advice to others ("yes we changed the rules but we did it to benefit you and if you are hurting now, well, it's all your fault!").
That seems as if it would be easier still.
Your management, lacking expertise, has no opinion about whether a particular alloy should be held at 550 degrees for an hour to make it less brittle.
My management almost always has an opinion about what I'm doing, usually in the form of the technical necessity of what I'm doing as it relates to cost/profit and marketability - or what someone else is doing in the competative marketplace. Depending on the type of hat I'm wearing, I'm also asked to provide assessments on other's performance and on the technical abilities and compensation of new hires. I've also been involved in decisions on reorganization (creating a new division by dividing an existing one). In my experience, there are a lot of people at the table providing opinions, and although we all work for "the man" the discussions are almost always shaped by what's best for the company and the employees. I agree that I'm doing what the management hired me to do, whether they like my opinion or not. I may be wrong, but I feel that professors face similar pressures in the research area concerning the marketability of their research and demand for their opinions.
Most of the research done in industry --- and that includes fields such as biomedics --- is applied.
This is true. It is also often true in academic research. It is exceedingly difficult to find altruistic benefactors in industry or academic research. Most research done is government or corporate funded these days. In my area, engineering, it is an applied science, so it would be difficult for me to refute "new fundamental" knowledge with my background. However, there are a number of professional societies/groups which are pushing the areas of information theory and communications theory forward outside of, though not isolated from, the academic institutions.
We may be an arrogant bunch, but engineers and computer scientists see their work as benefiting the society at large. If I, or my employer, can profit by my work - good news, pays the bills, keeps the family fed. Many of us write and design, without the needed protections, to further the body of knowlege on our own time and with our own money. Even the university plays in the economics of research, especially in the applied sciences.
Unfortunately, morality battles cannot be won with courts....we really do not know what optimal contract looks like even in very simple circumstances. Moreover, we do not fully know what constitutes performance --- in fact, I am not sure whether the measure of performance exists....You could not have known that: observing the CEOs while growing up does not help to advance, and probably distorts, one's knowledge of management.
It may be a stretch to put these together, but I want to agree and disagree with this train of thought. It is impossible to legislate, judiciate, or contract moral behaviour. Growing up, knowing the families that worked for my father, and eventually one becoming the President/CEO of the company, I was in a poor position to judge their managment skills. But we knew them in a way that the board members did not. Every year, we gathered together for clambakes, picnics, social events, and some we knew also through religious activities and events. We knew about their values. And I believe that when my father recommended one of his own for a promotion he was offered, it carried a lot of weight. He knew Jeffry Skilling and dealt with Enron regularly. He's not prone to showing his emotions, but the fact that Anderson was destroyed and Skilling is still not in jail, is one topic that can get a rise out of him.
Not all boards and CEO/CFOs are crooks. Not all the mistakes were driven by malice, but many were made by turning a blind eye to the man behind the curtain while the growth and profits were high.
On the topic of this thread, the 1998 and 2000 H1B bills were written with poor information, provided within an inaccurate context, and propped up with political contributions. Yes, there are economic benefits for driving done the cost of labor and management. Certainly organizations can drive down the costs of high demand/low supply technical skills (and talented experienced engineers/scientists) by broadening the pool of talent. I still believe that the talented CEO's paid close to 500 times what their talented/skilled labor force is paid is out of wack. I find it hard to understand why economics would support forcing down salaries of talented technology personnel while justifying huge increases in compensation for the CEO over the last two decades. If talent and performance can't be measured (especially in management), how can their compensation be justified?
Allow me to go back and ask how the current H1B law is justified given the following:
"Last year, the high technology industry announced layoffs of over 520,000 people. During this same period, the INS reported receiving applications for more than 324,000 temporary H1-B visas." - ICAA
I would like to see the numbers weeded out to identify where the shortfalls really are, and where employers are taking advantage of the system. Then a better law to help employers who truly can't find needed skills in the American marketplace and jail for the employers scamming the system.
"The unemployment rate for all engineers increased from 3.6 percent in the first quarter of 2002 to 4.0 percent in the second quarter, data from the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals. The rate for electrical and electronics engineers (EEs) rose from 4.1 percent to 4.8. The rate for computer scientists, which includes systems analysts, jumped from 4.8 to 5.3 percent. Overall unemployment fell from 5.9 to 5.4 percent."(1)
With over 1 million H1bs out there with IT jobs you are either sadly mistaken, or are just plain lying.
Oh, I get it now, you're a smoke and mirror man.
LOL!
Yes, they wanted to hire, and still want to hire H1bs over qualified Americans. Employers like the idea of having indentured servants that will work for less than half the price of an American.
The shortage myth was the result of smoke and mirror men who wanted to hire H1bs over qualified Americans.
I hope you don't really believe that knowledge can be created.
Knowledge can be discovered, but it's never created.
I agree that I'm doing what the management hired me to do, whether they like my opinion or not. I may be wrong, but I feel that professors face similar pressures in the research area concerning the marketability of their research and demand for their opinions. Started with normative observation (what should be done) and now switch to positive (what is out there).
With regard to realities, of course, a faculty member needs to publish and make his ideas known and accepted. To that extent, he or she markets the product by writing a paper in the style of a particular journal, taking it to an extra conference, etc. That is the extent of it. If the idea does not sell, it still does not matter: the next generation may appreciate it more. This is not the case in any commercial organization anywhere in the world.
Further, the compromises a young faculty member makes are precisely to receive certification. The tenure is given precisely for the purpose of relieving him from that pressure. Tenure is designed to give freedom; what one does with it is another matter. Some remain married to asking small questions and less risky projects that allow the author to maintain his presence. But many use it to pursue projects of their dreams.
The situation is much like that with U.S. Constitution that is designed to leave us free. Some use this freedom for trips to the mall; others stand up for what they believe is right. Just because not everyone uses his freedom fully (positive) does not negate the fact that that freedom should (normative) be granted. Moreover, there is no contradiction between the two: one is free not to exercise other freedoms in his possession.
Consider also that you deal with engineering and interact with scientific types. One does depend on funding because apparata and laboratories are needed: the more applied, the more funding. A theoretical physicist does not need any of that. An even better example is that of the Princetonian that solved the longest important problem in mathematics (The Fermat Theorem). The proof, which is over 700 pages long, required more than a single act of inspiration and took him seven (!) years devoted exclusively (!) to that project. That is what tenure is for: taking up a project with an almost nil probability of success.
Further, we should not be thinking so much about physics or engineering: tenure is granted to literature and sociology professors as well. Actually, it is the social disciplines that are more likely to run into resistance to new ideas, and it is those faculty members that need (and use) their tenure privileges most. Consider the fate of "The Bell Curve," for instance.
Re: Most of the research done in industry --- and that includes fields such as biomedics --- is applied.
OC: This is true. It is also often true in academic research. Again, you appear to judge from the engineering/science sample. Include research done by historians, those working in linguistics, archeology, literatures, etc.
In my area, engineering, it is an applied science…,However, there are a number of professional societies/groups which are pushing the areas of information theory and communications theory forward outside of, though not isolated from, the academic institutions. Of course, and they are doing a great job.
But note that the most of the scientific breakthroughs are those of Shannon himself and Chaitin, Kolmogorov, and a few others; they have been accomplishes long ago. Recent fundamental developments include new proofs of The Equipartition Theorem and various other issues that are part of the ergodic theory. They are done by professional mathematicians, whose results are more likely to be found in The Annals of Probability than IEEE or ACM journals. The same is true for coding: most of the fundamental research there, as I am sure you know, is done by algebraists (ergodicity and other measure and probability issues belong to the analysis of functions).
We may be an arrogant bunch, but engineers and computer scientists see their work as benefiting the society at large. No question about that (both parts).
But seriously, when I spoke of working for the community at large, I meant the immediate rather than ultimate consumption. We have to distinguish the two. Please note that the issue of tenure does not arise with regard to the latter. By the time its ultimate usefulness of something is apparent, the idea no longer meets any resistance. Today, neither the space travel nor the radios and cars we but would exist without the relativity theory, which was published in 1905. Seven years later, Pauli was writing to Einstein that by his count there were twelve (to wit) people that understood the theory. By the time it was fully accepted, it was too embarrassing to give the Nobel Prize. Isn't it telling that Einstein was never awarded the Nobel for his Theory of Relativity?
So, what matters in tenure-related matters is the immediate consumption. It is in this sense that a faculty member works for the community at large: the probability that another faculty member from your own university will read your article is almost zero. People who will consume your product work in other institutions.
This is in contrast to industry, where there is a buyer that is the immediate consumer of the product.
Not all boards and CEO/CFOs are crooks. Not all the mistakes were driven by malice, but many were made by turning a blind eye to the man behind the curtain while the growth and profits were high. Of course. The only disagreement that arouse initially was about the corollaries of that observation. I believe that in our society the burden of proof of someone's malfeasance of crime is on the accuser. This is generally accepted, except when it comes to two areas: (i) gov't and (ii) corporate management. Most people, including those on this thread, think nothing of raising an accusing finger against a specific person without the shred of evidence. That is against Judeo-Christian values; that is against our legal principles. And that was the original point I made.
Turn the tables on me. I believe that I have more than passing familiarity of management issues and practices. That gives me enough to become suspicious and raise questions in the case of Enron-like scandals. But this is not sufficient to form an opinion, let alone state it aloud: for that, my general knowledge should be applied to the specific situation at hand. I need to see the books, interview people, etc., before I can even form an opinion. And, when it comes to verdicts, that is an altogether different, legal area.
On the topic of this thread, the 1998 and 2000 H1B bills were written with poor information, One of my points was that ax ante information seems always poor ex post.
provided within an inaccurate context, One of my points was that no one knows that the "accurate" context is.
and propped up with political contributions. That goes back to the agency issues. One of my points was that senior managers are as prone to agency distortions (divergence of goals) as a night watchman who, when you do not see him, plays cards instead of guarding the shop.
To say succinctly: you expect too much from boards, senior management, and our political system. They act under limited resources of money, talent, knowledge, and time and, just like the rest of us, do their best. These positions are filled with real people that constitute a limited resource just like coal and water. Since unless proven otherwise their failures are empirically indistinguishable from mistakes, it is immoral for us to accuse them of malice or malfeasance. That, however, has become a national pastime, further fueled by the press.
Yes, there are economic benefits for driving done the cost of labor and management. In economic terms, all hired by the owners of the firm are labor. That includes everyone from the CEO down.
I still believe that the talented CEO's paid close to 500 times what their talented/skilled labor force is paid is out of wack. That is Marxist idea, which is totally discredited by now but still popular with the Europeans.
CEOs are commodities, factors of production, just as everything else. As all other factors of production, from trucks to paper supplies, they are purchased in an open market. That market is very thin and the "thinness" varies with time. If boards --- not just one particular board that may have colluded or made a mistake, but boards in the aggregate --- could purchase CEOs cheaper, they would.
I have no time to do full justice to this issues, by CEOs are not different from basketball players. If you look at all markets for talent, they have shown the same dynamic: salaries of players and actors skyrocketed in the last 5 years; it has been reported --- and angrily questioned --- why the salaried of university presidents skyrocket also (at Penn, for which I saw the number mentioned, the President receives over $800,000, whereas 5 years ago it was probably in the range of $300,000).
CEOs are a commodity, the price of which is determined by the market.
Perhaps, our paths will cross again, but presently I cannot contribute more to this thread for the lack of time.
Regards, TQ.
Perhaps. In any case I feel as if the rules have been changed so much in the past decade or so that not only the quality of my family's life, but the quality of all products in my field have been adversely affected. Not to mention corporate stock prices, secondary economic effects, and so on. I have little faith in the institutional unemployment and inflation statistics. From my direct experience, they are tweaked to suit policy, not vice versa. The "pockets" you describe can be black holes, depending on which area of the country one is in and what occupation. The aggregate statistics do not break it out by region and profession. Moving is not an option if there are family constraints which prevent it. In my case, there seems little point in trying to reverse the course of the river of change set in motion by forces beyond my control; I'll probably change careers. That's economics, many will undoubtedly say. However, I think whether the country is better off as a result of the imminent departure of thousands like myself from their chosen field, while thousands of foreigners enter, is at best -- and hopefully readers will realize that I am being diplomatic here -- an open question.
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