What about someone who works 10-12 hours and accomplishes the most tasks? I think you have to understand the corporate mindset without abandoning your black-belt coder-fu. Yes, you have to emphasize how difficult what you did was. You have to point out what you've accomplished. And tie yourself in directly with producing specific pieces of revenue wherever possible.
But this will all be helped if you can program well. And if you want to play office politics, it'll be useful to have the ability to accomplish someone else's job in half the time, if you really can.
No one's figured out a grand unified theory of Physics either but they still have a lot more useful conclusions and solid research than we do on ability.
I am disturbed by the lack of faith in open source among the readers here. I mean, I understand some skepticism but this, to me, is pretty extreme IP-fetishism.
It's perfectly understandable. Lots of money is made in the existing paradigm and so many of you have incentive to believe it's the most rational system. Besides, hard to imagine Google's doing something wrong, right?
But the argument that "the only people this will help is spammers"? Really? Are the only people helped by open cryptographic protocols those who look to decipher traffic?
"They have every right to keep it secret and profit off of it." Let's allow this for a moment. We've still got a false dichotomy. Making it public will not deprive them of their profit. First, incredible marketing coup. Does anyone else remember how much of Google's initial strength came from its rabid fans? This would do a lot of re-energize that base.
Second, are there going to be new startups which can effectively compete with Google, even given its algorithm? How are they going to provide a better experience, or serve the volume of traffic, or index a larger amount of pages with the same algorithm with fewer resources?
Third, who says they have to authorize competitors to use it? This is I think one of the more interesting points. They could release the algorithm but license it only for non-commercial use for anyone not themselves. Ridiculous? Because Microsoft would violate such a deal anyhow? Because the algorithm could simply be reimplemented? Perhaps. But it would be another roadblock.
Fourth, why do we continue to believe that Google's strength comes from proprietary code? Why do we not recognize that its strength comes from mindshare, user experience, and quality of execution? None of which would be negatively affected by releasing the source.
Perhaps Google would face heightened competition as a result of releasing its algorithm. Perhaps this would outweigh the benefits of doing so. But there would be significant good which would result, including public feedback which would make it significantly harder for spammers to be successful.
But I'm just a foaming-at-the-mouth open source radical. And I'm sure history is on your collective side. If there's anything we've learnt from a hundred years or so of Computer Science (overestimate if you only count actual programming, underestimate if you allow Babbage as you should), it's surely that secrecy is what drives innovation, right?
Neutral in this license appears to be in a gray area. The initial phrase "for Good, not Evil" presents a dichotomy. Now, this addendum allows Evil as well. So the license has never explicitly addressed this issue, it seems like it would depend on what else the license says.
Assuming that the license this is added to is a generally permissive license, I would assume that neutral acts are implicitly allowed and were probably not enjoined by "for Good, not Evil" as that clause would simply not have applied.
Thank you. I'm a sophomore CS student who's recently been going through huge amounts of "I'm never going to be qualified or find a job" moments and this post is the single most helpful thing I've seen.
I think right now my biggest weakness is that while I've done bits of work in a variety of languages, I don't have one that I'm really fluent in and thus could try to get recruited for. But the ideas you have here and the information in this whole thread will definitely be helpful as I try to orient myself towards the market.
My opinion: make it clear that they will not be drug tested nor do you care about how they may choose to relax in their free time. This will set you apart from many large corporate environments as well as indicating that you value a programmer's productivity rather than their conformity.
But this will all be helped if you can program well. And if you want to play office politics, it'll be useful to have the ability to accomplish someone else's job in half the time, if you really can.