John Cass › Comments

I didn't drop out but here is part of my experience in this post from years ago. It was discouraging to hear the professors talk. Needless to say i don't code. :-) http://www.altamirano.org/marketi... - Antonio Altamirano

Thankfully I'm in the other 50%, but I can see why many would change their major or drop out. I saw it first hand where many 1st and 2nd year Mechanical Engineering students changed their majors to something 'easier'. The most common reason was difficulty with the required advanced Math courses. Calculus being the road block for many. - Jeff P. Henderson

If I were entering college now, I would try to go to Olin. I really like their approach. - Paul Buchheit

nice post, I'm looking for the number of engineers (or per thousand capita ratio) graduating in Greece (or greeks graduating around the world) - George Tziralis

In CA we have two types of public universities. The UC schools require the professors to do research, where as the State University schools do not. I think the State University schools are much better for undergrad tech education as you get much more attention from your professors. - Jeff P. Henderson

The UC Berkeley College of Engineering started the Center For Entrepreneurship and Technology http://cet.berkeley.edu to address some of the issues Dodge talks about. - Ruchira S. Datta

Engineering is hard and requires above-average intelligence. Think about it this way: Statistics tells us that probably 50% of people will be below-average. Wouldn't you want those 50% of the students to drop out before actually becoming an engineer? MIT just doesn't admit that half of the population in the first place, but most schools don't have that luxury. - Gabe

People have a lot of options for (a) careers (b) money (c) power (d) image (e) attracting mates in the US, compared to China/India. Engineers are not valued very highly in the US compared to businesspeople, doctors, and lawyers. - Mitchell Tsai

@Gabe: You would think that all the people that go to study Computer Sciences or seek other Engineering degrees are above the 50% average to begin with. - Amit Morson

somestimes it's a scoail or maturity thing - was for me. I get by. Wished I finished. - Alan Wilensky from Alert Thingy

It's because of the fact that people with higher standards of living pursue less demanding challenges offering similar ROI (I = investment+involvement). That's why there's so many non-US students (especially from lower income countries) in engineering and why they're much less inclined to fail. - Nenad Nikolic from twhirl

Engineering sucks. I think there's a point where any engineering student realizes that even with a degree they're looking at a pretty mediocre salary working in a really boring job. Add this to the difficult coursework and boring courses, well, engineers are good at math. It adds up to being a raw deal. That being said, if you get into engineering at Stanford or UC Berkley, your ROI would look a lot better then mine. I'm sure a large number of engineering students consider dropping out, even after Calculus. - Will Higgins™

All I can do is nod. For a couple of years, not a day when by when I didn't consider jumping ship, for all the reasons commenters here have mentioned: long hours, heavy workload, fickle job market, salary barely comparable with what I could expect with a business or law degree. But here I am, a month away from (finally!) finishing my EE degree, and I couldn't be happier. - Derrick Burns

Continued from above: Basically, I think so many give up because they were looking to get something out of being an engineer: money, prestige, etc. But it's simply too great a commitment on several levels. You really have to pursue engineering because it's something you want to do, something you care about. - Derrick Burns

I dropped out because Chemical Engineering was not what I was expecting. I wanted more Chemistry, less Math. I switched to IT Management and found it much more interesting. Mind you, I'm Canadian. - Shey

I remember having a crisis in my final year of Electrical/Computer Engineering. Dropping out was a non-option, but I did consider completely abandoning 3.5 years of engineering study to switch fields and schools during my senior year. In hindsight, I didn't understand what engineers really did. My vision at the time was closer to industrial or product design than engineering. I had to take it on faith in my first two years that I was on a path to do what I was envisioning. - Kelly Norton

I suspect that more than 50% (even at good schools like GATech, I have friends who have done this) are in the wrong field. Many of my friends went into programming because they enjoyed computers and I've told them they would hate it because they don't like math. They don't listen. :) - mjc

still others go into engineering due to parental expectation, which I find ridiculous, but understandable - mjc

Amit: one of the properties of being in the lower 50% is not knowing that you're in the lower 50%. That means many of the applicants do not know they are unqualified. - Gabe

Extensive aptitude/personality testing could fix this - Aaron Eaton

Engineering is a tough subject. how does that compare to other subjects? - John Cass from twhirl

I actually sit on an advisory board for ASU (arizona state) Poly - I can tell you that what I see is students becoming disillusioned by all the stuff they have to learn before they can go out and create something "cool". The challenge is keeping them engaged through the pre-reqs/early coursework. BTW - IMHO the problem with "drop out and learn X" is that they've intentionally skipped the fundamentals that make good engineers. Just because you can code doesn't mean you can engineer... two different things. - Brian Roy

Is Computer Science part of engineering? Because it didn't take much training in Computer Science for me to start doing cool stuff. I wrote my first game and posted it onto the internet my freshman year (Core Wars). By my Junior year, I had designed a programming language and integrated in it into a MUD. Pengtoh had contributed to Linux by his sophomore year. On the other hand, I always flunked electrical engineering classes, and couldn't stomach math past linear algebra. - Piaw Na

I switch from Engineering to a Computer Science degree. Apart from the fact that I wanted to program, there were two reasons. 1) The load was very high (it was close to 40 contact hours/week in first year). 2) The maths was hard - I'm ok at math, but combined with the high load I found I struggled when I wasn't too interested in it. - Nick Lothian

"the US should staple a Green Card to every foreign student's engineering diploma and encourage them to stay in the USA." - Clare Dibble

Same as Nick here. Dropped out due to difficulty and lack of passion for the field. Went back later to finish a BS in Computer Information Systems. - Bill Sanders

I wonder what percentage of medical school students drop out. Engineering is a hard discipline, if you want to be a web dev or a study IT or "new media" instead. Making engineering "softer" because today's students don't like to work hard and expect results instantly will just create generations of mediocre engineers and will not make the US more of an engineering power. - Kevin Goldsmith from twhirl

engineers are boring and dry, pay is low, classes are full of non-social ppl. (and almost no girls). Why not study finance, or something, girls and pay is much better. - imran

Engineering is fun! The big thing is that school's curriculums are frequently irrelevant. For instance, a lot of CS majors require irrelevant Math or Physics not because it's a requirement to do good software (they aren't), but because those classes serve as weeders. The result is, for instance, we get lots of CS majors who can't communicate or string a sentence together. If we rearranged the CS major so that we didn't impose a stupid requirement, we'd get a bigger diversity of candidates and less dropout. - Piaw Na

Engineering is the best!!!! and for those who says it sucks or that the pay is not good (or that we are boring and dry), its probably because you are in that 50% of retards that dropped out of it. No other profession gets paid as much as an engineer right after graduation, and there is usually more demand for engineers than for anything else. I just think people are too lazy to even try anymore. I dont know why, even graduate school is fun in engineering. Aerospace is the best!!!!! - Mike hawk

life in a conceptual box is the result .. content with that, you will stay with it .. not content, universes open up - Gregory Lent

life in a conceptual box? do you even know what you are saying? universes open up when you quit engineering? If only you were to see the world through the eyes of en engineer, we see everything from several different perspectives, not just that of people like you. If anything, engineering has really opened up the world for me as it really is. Stop making those type of remarks. Instead get back to engineering school so you can see what it feels like. - Mike hawk

I think I know the boxes Gregory is talking about from some of his other comments. Whether you've gone to engineering school is orthogonal to whether you can get outside of them. So it's pretty much irrelevant to this thread. - Ruchira S. Datta

At least, those 50% tried. - Ashish

Thanks Robert, that's great news! Paul, hope you feel better... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Bruce: FriendFeed=Facebook. So, I'm interested in what he's doing and I'm a big fan of Facebook's. Twitter needs some competition. The Fail Whale is getting to me. - Robert Scoble

Another reliable update. - Ashish

I know it's a stretch but can we gather specific questions for Paul to answer? - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

When other sites like twitter come out with new features, you want to be at the front of the excited crowd. FriendFeed will make you into that curmudgeon who's always saying, "So what? They did that two years ago at FriendFeed." - Bruce Lewis

Cjay: I've been working on this interview since before Facebook bought FriendFeed. :-) - Robert Scoble

manielse: well, the interview isn't on 100% yet and now that I've talked about it in public who knows what will happen? But if it does happen of course we'll get you involved. - Robert Scoble

Cjay: I might be a rusty wheel, but remember two things: 1. I put many many thousands of hours into FriendFeed before the sale, bringing my audience over here at great risk to my personal brand. Lots of "experts" like Mike Arrington told me I was wrong to do that. 2. I'm still here. - Robert Scoble

OMGAWWWWW he still has "it" - sofarsoShawn ~presque...

I hope Paul gets to feeling better soon. He's a great guy. - Phil Glockner from iPhone

sofarso: I never lost it. :-) - Robert Scoble

Cjay: actually it's not. It just looks risky. - Robert Scoble

To those giving Scoble crap for being on FF, aren't you tired of that? You all have been doing that for at least a year. Enough. For us on FF, we'd love to see an interview, thanks. - Eric - seven eleven

Paul, get well soon - Shane

Good luck for the interview, Robert and thanks for the update. Hope Paul gets better soon. - Mahendra (SkepticGeek)

Thanks everyone. I'm actually not "very sick" though, just "kind of sick" -- it's mostly messing up my sleep. - Paul Buchheit from iPhone

be well! - Laura Norvig

Chicken soup - but stay away from those soul books ;) Hope you're up to speed soon, Paul. - Micah

Looking at the time-scale, doesn't that actually answer the question? You don;t wait THAT long to deliver good news or to debunk a false rumour that killings your platform (well, Zucks platform). - Jim Connolly

Paul - sorry to hear that! (it's 2:30 am here, I can empathize with your sleep problem) - Susan Beebe from BuddyFeed

Eric, sorry if it sounded like I was giving him crap. That wasn't my intention. I think Scobleizer has a serious career decision to make: http://ourdoings.com/ourdoin... - Bruce Lewis

Hope you feel better, Paul. - Kol Tregaskes

That will be an interesting interview, thanks for posting this update. - Dan owns Comicsforge.com

Can't wait for the interview!! Thanks to you and Paul for keeping us updated!! - Rosemary Sorg

+1 Patrik - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Robert, do you think Twitter is too unreliable or do you think the competition is healthy? - John Cass

Feel better soon, Paul! - Ruchira S. Datta

Via Google Translate? The number of supported languages is impressive. - John E. Bredehoft from fftogo

It looks a bit choppy, but it's still very inderstandable. Good job Jeremiah (and G translate) - TobiasVerhoog.com

If you want a better translation btw try: Bedankt voor uw uitnodiging, dit is mijn poging om in het Nederlands te schrijven via Friendfeed Translate. - TobiasVerhoog.com

niet slecht, voorwaar ik zeg u! - Adri Munier

Trippy. I don't speak or read Dutch, but I understood that. - Melinda Roberts

I'd have to go check it out! - The Coast Radio

It's the sux. Plain and simple. - Drew Lucas

Thanks Jeremiah, I was wondering if I should go. - John Cass

is that a blog, or a social network? I'd query IBM in detail on exactly what they are calling a blog. I talked with an IBM executive a few years ago, and it seemed to be more of a social networking tools rather than real blogs. Just checking. - John Cass

Interesting question. I'll have to ask next time I'm talking with one of the IBM guys. Thanks. - Nathan Gilliatt

I liked Dave Winer's quote, especially the part about quitting a company. - John Cass

John: 'it depends' is about the best answer I can come up with. - Brian Oberkirch

that's a good point Brian, depends on the size of the community and your goals - John Cass