Quote from: Zumbagirl on February 14, 2013, 11:41:08 AM
The really really sad part are the internships. A few years ago you could hire a bunch of kids and give them some experience and maybe some career guidance. It's so regulated now that the only people who show up for internships are kids coming from very wealthy families. So like I said, the rich will get richer, it's guaranteed now, by law.
I couldn't agree with you more. Both my son and daughter have (in my daughter's case, based on her sophomore PSAT is likely to have) an 800 Math SAT score and an intuitive understanding of and active interest in math concepts that is fairly unusual and usually elicits surprise and admiration from those teachers who recognize that as an asset. Some of that is my ex, but some of it is also me.
My son enters Drexel this fall to study 3D animation but he also did well on the calc AP, and I keep hoping, now that he's out of brain-dead secondary schools with programming classes that had very little sense to them -- his last one was mainly grounded in Java (not javascript)) -- but I'm hoping once he's in a better, and more practically-focused program like Drexel's that he will begin to understand and take an interest in the algorithmic side of that area, though for now he's much more interested in things like character design.
I am nearly allergic to self promotion, but I think some of the things you say you're looking for are traits that I have, such as a desire to learn new things and approach problems without prejudice about platforms, tools or a particular language that may be out of vogue within 6 months. I've always been more interested in finding ways to approach a puzzle and solve it, than in which tool or language the execution was done in. Some of the deficit, of course, is that, apart from some volunteer contributions to spotting and analyzing problems with video rendering, and site vulnerabilities at YouTube, as one of Google's volunteer TCs, I have relatively little hands on experience working with an IT team, and a lot of it has been at a distance. However, before children I was managing to make a pretty good income as one of the very early telecommuters -- I was telecommuting with one of the more obscure CP/M machines for the early years of that, but also traveling a lot on various research trips.
On the other hand, if what I've been hearing in reports lately about shifting thinking is true, I do have an understanding of US culture and markets, that tend to translate into design priorities, that might be something many of those Indian coders lack. Please feel free to IM me if you think of anyone I should try to contact, or have further suggestions. Given my basic competence with general programming principles, I've tended to avoid most classes, because only 5 or 10 percent of want they are teaching is likely to be something I didn't already know, and for a work project, learning that missing percent is going to be something specific to the project itself, more likely than the language or platform or other incidental details.
I tend to be more shy and cautious than I want to be, of course, given my current, androgynous, but pre-transition state, so I will be looking for someplace where trans identity is less likely to become an issue, which means I'd prefer to look for direct personal contacts, rather than blind job applications.
