Category: Article

This tech job has just been crowned the best in the country | ZDNet

Tech and STEM-related jobs offer the best opportunity for jobhunters and career-switchers to find satisfaction in their work, according to new careers data from Glassdoor.

Glassdoor’s 25 Best Jobs List for 2022 found that software developers, data scientists, IT architects and full-stack engineers dominate the top spots when measured by salary, job satisfaction and the number of job openings.

These three factors were taken from ratings from “hundreds of thousands” of employee reviews on the Glassdoor platform, which were combined with the number of role vacancies to create an overall ‘job score’.

Source: This tech job has just been crowned the best in the country | ZDNet

Enrollment Predictions with Machine Learning

Happy to announce that our joint paper, Enrollment Predictions with Machine Learning, co-authored with Hung Dang, Ginger Reyes Reilly and Katharine Soltys, has appeared in Volume 9, number 2, of the Strategic Enrollment Management Quarterly (SEMQ).

In this paper a Machine Learning framework for predicting enrollment is proposed. The framework consists of Amazon Web Services SageMaker together with standard Python tools for Data Analytics, including Pandas, NumPy, MatPlotLib and Scikit-Learn. The tools are deployed with Jupyter Notebooks running on AWS SageMaker. Based on three years of enrollment history, a model is built to compute — individually or in batch mode — probabilities of enrollments for given applicants. These probabilities can then be used during the admission period to target undecided students. The audience for this paper is both SEM practitioners and technical practitioners in the area of data analytics. Through reading this paper, enrollment management professionals will be able to understand what goes into the preparation of Machine Learning model to help with predicting admission rates. Technical experts, on the other hand, will gain a blue-print for what is required from them.

This paper has been made possible in part by the AWS Pilot Program in Machine Learning where California State University Channel Islands was one if the participating institutions.

Amazon Wants to Train 29 Million People to Work in the Cloud – WSJ

Amazon . com Inc. announced an effort Thursday aimed at helping 29 million people world-wide retrain by 2025, giving them new skills for cloud-computing roles as the pandemic upends many careers.

The online giant committed $700 million last year to reskilling 100,000 of its own workers in the U.S. The new effort will build on existing programs and include new ones in partnership with nonprofits, schools and others.

Amazon’s latest initiative is geared toward those who aren’t already employed at the company. The idea, it says, is to equip people with the education needed to work in cloud-computing at a number of employers seeking to fill high-tech positions. While some participants might find jobs at Amazon, it is more likely they would get hired at other companies, including many that use Amazon Web Services, the online retailer’s cloud division.

Source: Amazon Wants to Train 29 Million People to Work in the Cloud – WSJ

Why 4-year colleges are tapping Amazon to help deliver cloud computing degrees

Amazon Web Services is one of a handful of tech employers, including Google and Microsoft, helping colleges offer credentials in the field.

Cal State Channel Islands is part of the growing list of AWS Academy institutions, a group of mostly colleges that select at least one instructor to be authorized by the cloud computing giant to teach its courses to students.

Source: Why 4-year colleges are tapping Amazon to help deliver cloud computing degrees | Education Dive

Top Programming Languages 2020 – IEEE Spectrum

It would be an understatement to say it’s been a turbulent year since the last time IEEE Spectrum broke out the digital measuring tools to probe the relative popularity of programming languages. Yet one thing remains constant: the dominance of Python.

Since it’s impossible for even the most aggressive spy agency in the world to find out what language every single programmer uses when they sit down at their keyboards—especially the ones tapping away on retro computers or even programmable calculators—we rely on combining 11 metrics from online sources that we think are good proxies for the popularity of 55 languages.

Because different programmers have different interests and needs, our online rankings are interactive, allowing you to weight the metrics as you see fit. Think one measure is way more valuable than the others? Max it out. Disagree with us about the worth of another? Turn it off. We have a number of preset rankings that focus on things such as emerging languages or what jobs employers are looking to fill (big thanks to CareerBuilder for making it possible to query their database this year, now that it’s no longer accessible using a public application programming language).

Source: Top Programming Languages 2020 – IEEE Spectrum

Companies Devote Shrinking Tech Budgets to Cloud, AI – WSJ

Companies world-wide are diverting capital spending from information-technology hardware to cloud services, artificial intelligence and other tools that hold the promise of cutting costs and boosting revenue, according to research group International Data Corp.

Overall corporate spending on enterprise technology is expected to decline this year, as companies slash IT budgets to cope with a downturn in business sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, the research group said in a report Wednesday.

The group’s IT spending index dropped to 987 in April, down from 1,005 in March. The index is based on a global survey of enterprise IT buyers and a composite of market and economic indicators. A score above 1,000 indicates that IT spending is expected to increase, while a score below 1,000 points toward a likely decline.

Source: Companies Devote Shrinking Tech Budgets to Cloud, AI – WSJ

Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

U.S. colleges can track hundreds of thousands of students using short-range phone sensors and campus-wide Wi-Fi networks to assess their academic performance, monitor their conduct, or rate their mental health. Academicians and education advocates are concerned such monitoring and supervision will infantilize students and make them accept surveillance as a normal part of life. The schools rely on networks of Bluetooth transmitters and wireless access points to piece together students’ movements. School and technology company officials say location tracking allows schools to intervene before problems crop up, but some institutions calculate “risk scores” based on factors such as how often pupils visit the library. Critics contend such policies could undermine student independence and discourage non-academic pursuits. The University of California, San Diego’s Erin Rose Glass said, “We’re reinforcing this sense of powerlessness … when we could be asking harder questions, like: why are we creating institutions where students don’t want to show up?”

The systems highlight how widespread surveillance has increasingly become a fact of life: Students “should have all the rights, responsibilities and privileges that an adult has. So why do we treat them so differently?”

— Read on www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/24/colleges-are-turning-students-phones-into-surveillance-machines-tracking-locations-hundreds-thousands/

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud

When mainstream cloud computing first began to appear on the horizon, (Amazon launched its Elastic Compute Cloudproduct in 2006.) many organizations were initially hesitant to entrust their most valuable data and processes to a technological innovation named after something that appears so delicate.

Oh, how times have changed. Today, an estimated 96% of organizations use cloud computing, with over 80% operating multi-cloud landscapes thanks to a range of benefits that include efficiency, scalability, flexibility, mobility, disaster recovery and security.

As organizations continue to transition more of their computing infrastructure to cloud environments, the decision on what provider to use commonly comes down to the Big Three — Amazon Web Services vs. Microsoft’s Azure vs. Google Cloud Platform. And one of the top concerns when choosing a cloud computing provider is, yes, security.

securityboulevard.com/2019/12/aws-vs-azure-vs-google-whats-the-difference-from-a-cloud-security-standpoint/

The Cloud runs on Linux

A decade ago clouds were more marketing hot air than reality. Today, IDC says more than a third of all IT spending worldwide is on the cloud. Looking ahead, Gartner predicts that half of global enterprises will have gone all-in on the cloud by 2021. And the Cloud runs on Linux.

www.zdnet.com/article/2019s-five-biggest-linux-and-open-source-stories/

AWS and Azure

seekingalpha.com/article/4313893-aws-and-azure-racing-for-best-business-opportunity-of-21st-century

Summary

  • AWS just wrapped up its annual user conference, launching 28 new products at the conference.
  • Cloud platforms are evolving from a focus on commoditized IT infrastructure compute instances to offering an incredibly wide range of services.
  • Every company must utilize the cloud to access the leading technologies.  AWS and Azure are clearly in the leadership positions.
  • Thoughts on valuation in the context of what AWS CEO Andy Jassy calls the “most titanic shift that we’ve seen in technology in our lifetime”.