[lbo-talk] A Glimpse into the Fate of Ph.D's currently

[123hop at comcast.net]

"I can't agree with this kind of generalization about the organizations as 
somehow intrinsically meritocratic on account of the content or type of 
work. Shag probably has many more stories of professionally produced — and 
well paid — crap code than I have, even if it "works" (one is tempted to 
make a crack about Vista, but I will stop at expressing the temptation), or 
of people getting by on less than stellar work, but my own anecdotal 
experience doesn't gibe with yours, apparently."

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I didn't say the organizations were meritocratic. I said the grunts have to know what they're doing. I explicitly said mangers don't. And the more power they have, the less they know what they are doing. 

For this reason a lot of good code just gets thrown away. Something like Vista is the result of management; not the result of bad engineering. 

I didn't say business was rational. All I said was that on the ground level, if people are incompetent they get fired even if they have degrees from top universities and have great cocktail chatter.

It's funny though, a close friend who is one of the best programmers I know is basically giving up on working for IT because he wants his work to make a difference in the world and he's tired of making venture capitalists rich. So. We're all pretty much just drowning in it.

Joanna